Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Sophie Taeuber-Arp (January 19, 1889 - January 13, 1943) (often pronounced|ˈtɔɪbɚ ˈɑrp in English) was a Swiss artist, painter, and sculptor.

Sophie Täuber studied applied art in Munich and Hamburg. In 1915 she met Jean Arp and they married in 1922. Both were involved in the Zürich Dada movement and the Surrealist movement as well. She designed puppets and sets for Cabaret Voltaire performances, where she also participated as a puppeteer and as a dancer.

Taeuber-Arp also taught at the Zürich School of Arts and Crafts from 1916 to 1929.

From the late 1920s, she lived in Paris and continued experimenting with design. Her skills developed into large scale interior design when she created a radical interior for a teashop/cafe.

In the 1930s, she expressed Constructivist sympathies by joining Cercle et Carré and abstraction-création groups. She also published her own Constructivist journal entiteld 'Plastique'.

Taeuber-Arp, Sonia Delaunay, and others created an art colony at Grasse in Southern France, after fleeing Paris in advance of the German invasion. The colony was active from 1941 to 1943, when Taeuber-Arp died, during a visit to Switzerland, in an accident with a stove.

She has been depicted on the 50 Swiss francs banknotes issued since 1995.

References

*cite book | author=West, Shearer | title=The Bullfinch Guide to Art | location=UK | publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing Plc | year=1996 | id=ISBN 0-8212-2137-X