March 1–June 1, 2025
1 Chome-7-2 Kyobashi
Tokyo 104-0031
Japan
Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) began her career as a textile designer, then pursued compositions of intricate geometric forms in the territory of paintings and interiors. Her husband Jean Arp (1886–1966) was both a poet and an artist who created collages and reliefs based on serendipitously discovered forms. This exhibition presents an outstanding artist couple of the first half of the twentieth century, introducing their individual works and drawing attention to their influences on each other and to works on which they collaborated, to reassess the creative potential of a partnership of spouses. From oversea collections including works from the Fondation Arp, Clamart in France and the Stiftung Arp e. V., Berlin/Rolandswerth in Germany, it comprises fourty-five works by Taeuber-Arp, thirty-six works by Jean Arp, and seven on which the couple collaborated: eighty-eight works in all.
Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943)
Born in Davos, Switzerland, she studied at schools of applied arts, then met Jean Arp in Zurich, in 1915. They married in 1922. She engaged in teaching textile design while also opening up her genre-crossing creative activities in spatial decoration and painting, based on her research on color theory and geometric abstraction.
Jean Arp (1886–1966)
Born in Strasbourg, Germany (now part of France). Studied art in Germany and in Paris. He took part in Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and Dadaism. From the 1920s, he made his way between Surrealism and Abstraction, with collages, reliefs, and sculpture as his primary creative terrain.
