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Lot Essay
Jean Arp’s exploration of the human body marked a decisive shift in his practice, allowing him to give full expression to the analogy between human and vegetal forms that underpins much of his mature oeuvre. Reflecting on this turning point, the artist recalled:
“For many years, roughly from the end of 1919 to 1931, I interpreted most of my works. Often the interpretation was more important for me than the work itself. Suddenly my need for interpretation vanished, and the body, the form, the supremely perfected work became everything to me. In 1930 I went back to the activity which the Germans so eloquently call Hauerei (hewing). I engaged in sculpture and modeled in plaster. The first products were two torsos” (quoted in M. Andreotti, The Early Sculpture of Jean Arp, London, 1989, p. 176).
Conceived in 1959, Torse, profil embodies this mature sculptural language. The arched back and open, asymmetrical stance animate the form with a sense of rhythmic movement, as if the figure were stretching or gently rising from its base. Smoothly rounded volumes swell and recede in continuous motion, evoking processes of organic growth and transformation. Though identified as a torso, the sculpture resists fixed orientation: front and back dissolve into one another, and individual forms—suggestive of hip, breast, or abdomen—remain deliberately indeterminate.
This ambiguity is central to Arp’s conception of form. The work operates as a point of convergence between the human body and the natural world, where morphology becomes fluid and associative rather than descriptive. As Margherita Andreotti has observed:
“Despite their high degree of simplification, most of Arp’s recurring torsos have recognizably feminine connotations. This indicates, on the one hand, their descent from the many female nudes Arp had drawn well before his discovery around 1916 of biomorphic forms, and, on the other, it suggests that Arp adhered to the traditional notion that sensual beauty is best expressed by the female body, whose curvaceous forms must have seemed particularly well suited to Arp’s curvilinear vocabulary. In his preference for the feminine form, Arp may also have been reflecting the age-old symbolism equating woman with nature, which was implicit in his well-known statement, ‘Art is a fruit that grows in man like a fruit on a plant or a child in its mother's womb’” (ibid., p. 181).
In Torse, profil, this synthesis finds a particularly refined expression. The sculpture’s polished surface heightens the continuity of its undulating contours, reinforcing the sense of a form in perpetual becoming—at once human, vegetal, and abstract—while maintaining a distinctly sensual, and subtly feminine, presence.
“For many years, roughly from the end of 1919 to 1931, I interpreted most of my works. Often the interpretation was more important for me than the work itself. Suddenly my need for interpretation vanished, and the body, the form, the supremely perfected work became everything to me. In 1930 I went back to the activity which the Germans so eloquently call Hauerei (hewing). I engaged in sculpture and modeled in plaster. The first products were two torsos” (quoted in M. Andreotti, The Early Sculpture of Jean Arp, London, 1989, p. 176).
Conceived in 1959, Torse, profil embodies this mature sculptural language. The arched back and open, asymmetrical stance animate the form with a sense of rhythmic movement, as if the figure were stretching or gently rising from its base. Smoothly rounded volumes swell and recede in continuous motion, evoking processes of organic growth and transformation. Though identified as a torso, the sculpture resists fixed orientation: front and back dissolve into one another, and individual forms—suggestive of hip, breast, or abdomen—remain deliberately indeterminate.
This ambiguity is central to Arp’s conception of form. The work operates as a point of convergence between the human body and the natural world, where morphology becomes fluid and associative rather than descriptive. As Margherita Andreotti has observed:
“Despite their high degree of simplification, most of Arp’s recurring torsos have recognizably feminine connotations. This indicates, on the one hand, their descent from the many female nudes Arp had drawn well before his discovery around 1916 of biomorphic forms, and, on the other, it suggests that Arp adhered to the traditional notion that sensual beauty is best expressed by the female body, whose curvaceous forms must have seemed particularly well suited to Arp’s curvilinear vocabulary. In his preference for the feminine form, Arp may also have been reflecting the age-old symbolism equating woman with nature, which was implicit in his well-known statement, ‘Art is a fruit that grows in man like a fruit on a plant or a child in its mother's womb’” (ibid., p. 181).
In Torse, profil, this synthesis finds a particularly refined expression. The sculpture’s polished surface heightens the continuity of its undulating contours, reinforcing the sense of a form in perpetual becoming—at once human, vegetal, and abstract—while maintaining a distinctly sensual, and subtly feminine, presence.