Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889 – 1943) was one of the most important artists of the 20th-century avant-garde and is considered a pioneer of Constructivist art. Reconciling extremes with confidence—Dada and Geometric Abstraction, fine art and utilitarian objects—Taeuber-Arp’s works boldly engaged with the intellectual context of international modernism.

Through her multifaceted approach to media, she challenged traditional hierarchies between fine and applied art, and asserted art’s urgent relevance to daily life. Taeuber-Arp defied categorization during her brief career through her work as a painter, sculptor, architect, performer, choreographer, teacher, writer, and designer of textiles, stage sets and interiors.

Taeuber-Arp will be the subject of a major retrospective exhibition co-organized by The Museum of Modern Art, Kunstmuseum Basel, and Tate Modern. ‘Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction’ opens in March 2021 at Kunstmuseum Basel in Taeuber-Arp’s native Switzerland, and will subsequently be presented at Tate Modern in London, where it will be the first-ever survey of the artist’s work in the United Kingdom, and at MoMA in New York, the artist’s first major US exhibition in nearly 40 years.

Working with Stiftung Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp e. V., our shared goal is to foster deeper awareness Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s oeuvre to wider audiences and new generations internationally through exhibitions, the commissioning of new scholarship, and by supporting the research and publication of the catalogue raisonné.

A new bilingual website, sophietaeuberarp.org, will launch this summer as an openly accessible online-database for the research materials of the foundation and the catalogue raisonné in progress.

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Since 1977, the Stiftung Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp e. V. has overseen a great part of the artistic estates of Sophie Taeuber-Arp as well as her husband Hans Arp. The foundation’s most important mission is to make the work of Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Hans Arp accessible to a wide international audience through the support of exhibitions, loans and publications, as well academic research.

In 2020 and 2021 the foundation’s scholarship program for academics will focus on engaging with the work of Sophie Taeuber-Arp. In 2021, the Stiftung Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp e. V. will host an international conference on her work in collaboration with the Tate, London. Launching this summer, the bilingual online-database, sophietaeuberarp.org, will make research materials of the foundation available to scholars worldwide.