Sculpture mythique

By 1930, some two years after he disengaged from the Surrealists, Jean Arp found himself more and more preoccupied by the expanded volumes of sculpture in the round. Years later he recalled, "Suddenly my need for interpretation vanished, and the body, the form, the supremely perfected work became everything to me" (quoted in Arp, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1958, p. 14). It was from this point forward that he learned to transform the biomorphic shapes of his earlier reliefs into full-fledged sculptural forms. Finding a touchstone in the eternal process of nature, the sculpture of the second half of Arp's career plays infinite variations on this theme, instinctively recasting its elemental motifs—organic bodies, biological shapes—into integral new forms.
Sculpture mythique, conceived by Arp in 1949, is a proudly organic form, with its soft, undulating silhouette suggestive of transformation and metamorphosis. The title itself could allude to the mythical nymph Daphne who was metamorphosed into a laurel tree as she was pursued by Apollo. The principles of metamorphosis and fertility had long inspired Arp’s creative process, whose organic quality Arp emphasized from the beginning. "Often some detail in one of my sculptures, a curve or a contrast that moves me, becomes the germ of a new work... Sometimes it will take months, even years to work out a new sculpture. I do not give up until enough of my life has flowed into its body. Each of these bodies has a definite significance, but it is only when I feel there is nothing more to change that I decide what it is, and it is only then that I give it a name" (quoted in H. Read, The Art of Jean Arp, New York, 1968, p. 87).