Fatherless from the age of only two, Sophie Taeuber studied at GBS St. Gallen and at the Debschitz-Schule, a school of applied arts in Munich, before moving to Zurich in 1914, where she met Jean Arp the following year. From 1918 to 1939, they shared a work and life community, seeking to develop an anonymous and collective art.
A passionate dancer who divided her time between teaching and creating, Sophie Taeuber-Arp is today recognised as a key figure of early Constructivism in Switzerland, after long being stuck in her husband’s shadow. She also got into the competitive spirit of the Dada movement during her years in Zurich (she danced at Café Voltaire, a hub of Dadaism), and was the first woman in Switzerland to make the shift towards geometry.
Growing up in a family in which creativity permeated everyday life probably helped her extricate herself from a mimetic relationship with objects. In other words, her compositions owe very little to the outer world. Her language is characterised by a syntax consisting of colour planes and simple shapes (originally orthogonal, and later integrating curves), as if the surface generated its own organisational laws.
During a stay in Strasbourg in 1926 Sophie Taeuber-Arp received several interior design commissions. Her highly integrated plastic language seemed to find full expression when confronted with the real space of architecture: that of Hotel Hannong, and also that of L’Aubette, a dining and leisure complex that pharmacist André Horn asked her to decorate, in addition to his own apartment. From a desire to create a total work of art, she often integrated architectural elements into those decorative ensembles.
A designer, painter, dancer, puppeteer, decorator, and architect (of the house she shared with Arp in Meudon), Sophie Taeuber-Arp died accidentally while visiting their friend Max Bill in 1943. In 1939 she recounted a dream: “On a sandy beach, at the bottom of a cliff, my index finger, as if on its own, drew the word “happy” in the sand. At that moment, an idea crossed my mind: if a rock were to crush me, there would be nothing left of me but the word ‘happy’. Who dares to say that today without having to fear triviality?”
A passionate dancer who divided her time between teaching and creating, Sophie Taeuber-Arp is today recognised as a key figure of early Constructivism in Switzerland, after long being stuck in her husband’s shadow. She also got into the competitive spirit of the Dada movement during her years in Zurich (she danced at Café Voltaire, a hub of Dadaism), and was the first woman in Switzerland to make the shift towards geometry.
Growing up in a family in which creativity permeated everyday life probably helped her extricate herself from a mimetic relationship with objects. In other words, her compositions owe very little to the outer world. Her language is characterised by a syntax consisting of colour planes and simple shapes (originally orthogonal, and later integrating curves), as if the surface generated its own organisational laws.
During a stay in Strasbourg in 1926 Sophie Taeuber-Arp received several interior design commissions. Her highly integrated plastic language seemed to find full expression when confronted with the real space of architecture: that of Hotel Hannong, and also that of L’Aubette, a dining and leisure complex that pharmacist André Horn asked her to decorate, in addition to his own apartment. From a desire to create a total work of art, she often integrated architectural elements into those decorative ensembles.
A designer, painter, dancer, puppeteer, decorator, and architect (of the house she shared with Arp in Meudon), Sophie Taeuber-Arp died accidentally while visiting their friend Max Bill in 1943. In 1939 she recounted a dream: “On a sandy beach, at the bottom of a cliff, my index finger, as if on its own, drew the word “happy” in the sand. At that moment, an idea crossed my mind: if a rock were to crush me, there would be nothing left of me but the word ‘happy’. Who dares to say that today without having to fear triviality?”
