Lot Essay
Arp first made painted wood reliefs in 1916 and continued to work in this medium for the rest of his life.
More and more in the reliefs of his later years, Arp discarded the mocking methods by which he had once interrogated the disordered world... Gradually after 1929, he abandoned those earlier, Dada-like forms which were launched to shock and began to emphasize, with a new spirit of detachment, the world of organic growth and structure which encompasses our lives... Ovals and rotating forms, periods, commas or rudimentary shapes with undulating organic surfaces are distributed, balanced and grouped into constellations upon a plane. (R. Melville, "On Some of Arp's Reliefs," Arp, New York, 1958 [The Museum of Modern Art exhibition catalogue], pp. 22-23)
More and more in the reliefs of his later years, Arp discarded the mocking methods by which he had once interrogated the disordered world... Gradually after 1929, he abandoned those earlier, Dada-like forms which were launched to shock and began to emphasize, with a new spirit of detachment, the world of organic growth and structure which encompasses our lives... Ovals and rotating forms, periods, commas or rudimentary shapes with undulating organic surfaces are distributed, balanced and grouped into constellations upon a plane. (R. Melville, "On Some of Arp's Reliefs," Arp, New York, 1958 [The Museum of Modern Art exhibition catalogue], pp. 22-23)