Sophie Taeuber-Arp was a painter, a
sculptor, a dancer, a designer and an architect.
A radical innovator, even in the face 
of the catastrophe of two world wars,
she understood that when everything
is collapsing around you,
the infinite space of the imagination
is one of the few sites that can offer solace.
She was born Sophie Taeuber, on 
19 of January 1889 in Davos, Switzerland.
After studying textiles and dance, 
she immersed herself in modernism,
moving fluidly between abstraction and figuration, 
fine art, design and applied arts.
In 1915, she met the Alsatian artist Hans Arp.
They became soul mates and
collaborators in art and in life.
When they married in 1922, 
Sophie became Taeuber-Arp.
In later years, Hans remembered how, 
in their rejection of conservative art forms,
they wanted ‘to simplify and transmute
the world, and make it beautiful.’
The couple was central to the
development of Dada,
which roared into life in a 
small room in Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire
with poetry, performance and music.
A form of absurdist revelry 
that had deeply serious intentions
Dada argued for a language that represented
an actual, as opposed
to an ideal, version of life.
One that responded with a 
wild, inventive howl
to World War I’s
government-sanctioned carnage.
If life is irrational and 
unreasonable, they asked,
why should art be any different?
Taeuber-Arp lived intensely.
For her, art and life were intertwined.
By day, she taught at the 
School of Applied Arts in Zurich,
and by night she danced,
most famously to Hugo Ball’s poem ‘Caravane’
in a mask designed by the 
Romanian artist Marcel Janko
Ball described her as ‘a bird, a young lark
…lifting the sky as it took flight’.
She painted pictures, designed 
costumes and marionettes, and created
sculptural portraits from turned wooden 
hat stands she titled Dada Heads.
While a pioneer of abstraction, 
her work is embedded in the physical world,
it's often as rhythmic as a dance, 
and filled with allusions
to the sky, the sea and the earth.
In later years, the circle 
became her cosmic metaphor—
an infinite shape that contains the world.
In 1926, the architect Paul Horn 
and his brother Andre
commissioned Taeuber-Arp to decorate 
and furnish the interior of the Aubette,
a cultural center in the main
square of Strasbourg.
She invited her husband and the Dutch artist 
Theo van Doesburg to work on the project with her.
The result was the first public interior
to integrate modernist ideas of art and function.
The Dadaist Emmy Hennings described 
how the painted walls gave
‘the illusion of almost endlessly vast rooms...
The house may become a treasure box, a reliquary,
and one can always look at it with new eyes…
It is like owning the lamp with which 
Aladdin lighted the marvellous cave.’
The couple moved to the outskirts of Paris,
where Sophie designed
their modernist home, studio and furniture.
They led a life rich with experimentation, 
exhibitions and friendship.
With artists including Sonia and Robert Delaunay,
Duchamp, Kandinsky and Miró.
Sophie joined artist groups
that espoused abstraction,
and founded and edited the art magazine ‘Plastique’.
It’s first issue was devoted to the 
Russian Suprematist, Malevich.
When World War II was declared, 
the world fell apart.
Sophie and Hans fled Paris,
arriving eventually in Grasse, 
where they stayed
with Susi and Alberto Magnelli, 
and Sonia Delaunay.
The upheaval brought about a radical
shift in Taeuber-Arp’s work.
Hans remembered:
‘Lost and impassioned, she drew lines, 
long curves, spirals, circles,
roads that twist through dream and reality.’
In 1942, Hans and Sophie traveled 
to Zurich, where, in 1943
Sophie died of accidental
carbon monoxide poisoning,
at the home of their friend, 
the artist Max Bill.
She was 53.
Despite the tragedy of her death, 
her life and work
is a great testament to
the creative power of joy.
In 1937, Taeuber-Arp wrote to her goddaughter:
‘Something to which I attribute great value … is gaiety.
It allows us to have no fear before the problems of life
and to find a natural solution to them.’
