Torse des Pyrénées

In 1931, Arp made a small marble Torso 141/8 inches high with a serpentine curve to the spine and no suggestion of legs (Read, no. 90). In 1957 he produced a bronze cast of this image, in an edition of three, approximately three feet in height (Read, no. 118). This may have inspired him two years later to carve the present work, which is larger still and further refined by the addition of forms simulating female thighs.

"Arp's figures are always torsos. The language of his form demands this--it knows no extremities. A display of subtlety, gesticulating forms that express some ingenious idea would certainly have been anathema to him. Arp knows only the torso, but not as a fragment of something originally whole. The torso becomes an independent complete form" (E. Trier, op. cit., p. xi).