Jean Arp

Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp (1886 1966), better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter, and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist.

In his collages, reliefs, and sculptures, Arp often embraced chance and spontaneity as integral components of the artistic process. In Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance (1916), for example, Arp explored the potential for unique compositional relationships that result from inadvertent arrangement of collage elements. Arp’s articulation of biomorphic forms, inspired by organic material and the human figure, was simultaneously explored by the later 20th-century abstract artists.