Hans Arp
7 Arpaden von Hans Arp (Merz 5. Arp-Mappe)
Artist
Hans Arp
Provenance
Private collection, Southern Germany.
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Description
The following sheets are included: 2 The Sea, 3 A Navel, 5 String Clock, 6 Egg Beater, 7 Arabic Eight.
- Extremely rare portfolio by Hans Arp
- From the publishing house of his artist friend Kurt Schwitters, who coined the term "Merz"
- Hans Arp is one of the most important representatives of DADA
With Hans Arp's portfolio, we are offering a testimony to one of the most fascinating artistic movements of the 20th century: DADA. The movement is still not entirely comprehensible, its meaning (and nonsense) is blurred and eludes the art-historical urge to find -isms and to establish a goose march of styles. One thing is certain: Dada was founded in 1916, its "parents" include Hans Arp as well as Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings and Tristan Tzara.
In 1923, Hans Arp was newly married to Sophie Taeuber; he had also begun to work with Kurt Schwitters - the artist who, in the same year, began to transform his apartment in Hanover into the "Merzbau". Schwitters used the term "Merz" as a programmatic alternative term to "DADA". The word is similarly meaningless as "DADA", it comes from an accidental collage by Schwitters, in which he cut up advertisements in such a way that this scrap of word remained. From then on, Kurt Schwitters used this alternative term, which was often dismissed as too "bourgeois" by his colleagues.
His friend Hans Arp also refers to this term in the portfolio offered here, as it appears as a printed copy of Schwitters' Merz-Verlag in Hanover. Originally 50 copies were printed, so the individual portfolios are rare today.
Arntz 306, 307, 309-311.
- Extremely rare portfolio by Hans Arp
- From the publishing house of his artist friend Kurt Schwitters, who coined the term "Merz"
- Hans Arp is one of the most important representatives of DADA
With Hans Arp's portfolio, we are offering a testimony to one of the most fascinating artistic movements of the 20th century: DADA. The movement is still not entirely comprehensible, its meaning (and nonsense) is blurred and eludes the art-historical urge to find -isms and to establish a goose march of styles. One thing is certain: Dada was founded in 1916, its "parents" include Hans Arp as well as Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings and Tristan Tzara.
In 1923, Hans Arp was newly married to Sophie Taeuber; he had also begun to work with Kurt Schwitters - the artist who, in the same year, began to transform his apartment in Hanover into the "Merzbau". Schwitters used the term "Merz" as a programmatic alternative term to "DADA". The word is similarly meaningless as "DADA", it comes from an accidental collage by Schwitters, in which he cut up advertisements in such a way that this scrap of word remained. From then on, Kurt Schwitters used this alternative term, which was often dismissed as too "bourgeois" by his colleagues.
His friend Hans Arp also refers to this term in the portfolio offered here, as it appears as a printed copy of Schwitters' Merz-Verlag in Hanover. Originally 50 copies were printed, so the individual portfolios are rare today.
Arntz 306, 307, 309-311.