1889 -1943 · Zurich, Strasbourg, Paris and living abstraction

Grids, colorful rhythms and moving shapes make Sophie Taeuber-Arp a pioneer who brings together painting, textiles, dance, architecture and design.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp was born in Davos in 1889 and died accidentally in Zurich in 1943. Trained in applied arts in St. Gallen, Munich and Hamburg, she very early refused the separation between fine arts, crafts and daily life. In Zurich, she taught textile design from 1916 to 1929, practiced dance with Rudolf von Laban and participated in the Dada movement alongside Jean Arp, whom she married in 1922. Her textiles, embroidery, pearls, puppets and turned heads translated the body and the object through geometric shapes that were both precise and playful. From 1926 to 1928, she collaborated with Arp and Theo van Doesburg on the development of the Aubette in Strasbourg, a major architectural ensemble modern interior. Based near Paris, she then developed paintings and reliefs based on the grid, the circle, the diagonal and asymmetrical balances. Composition Aubette and Composition with diagonals and crosses show how color activates space without illustrating it. Member of Cercle et Carré then Abstraction-Création, she also publishes the journal Plastique/Plastic. Her multidisciplinary work makes abstraction an experience to inhabit, touch and set in motion. The "Sophie Taeuber-Arp" selection notably compares Composition Aubette and Composition Dada.

Taeuber-Arp does not place geometry above life: it gives it a rhythm that one can look at, carry, cross or dance.