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Hans Arp citations
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Jean Arp ou Hans Arp, né à Strasbourg, le 16 septembre 1886 et mort à Locarno, en Suisse, le 7 juin 1966, est un peintre, sculpteur et poète allemand puis français. Cofondateur du mouvement dada à Zurich en 1916, il fut ensuite proche du surréalisme. Il réalisa de nombreuses œuvres plastiques, en étroite collaboration avec sa femme, Sophie Taeuber. La Bourse de traduction du Prix Nathan Katz du patrimoine a été attribuée en 2004 à Aimée Bleikasten pour ses traductions des poèmes en langue allemande de Jean Arp.

✵ 16. septembre 1886 – 7. juin 1966
Hans Arp photo
Hans Arp: 44   citations 0   J'aime

Hans Arp Citations

“La pureté d'un principe me rend heureux, voir au-delà de l'horizontale qui s'élargit tranquillisant les nouveautés végétales des pays éloignés; floraisons de glace. La verticale : dans la sérieuse pensée devant l'infini en sentant la profondeur d'un instant devant l'animal.”

Hans Arp

Note 2 sur l'art, 1917

animaux , pays , pensée

“L'homme est sale, il tue les animaux, les plantes, ses frères, il querelle, il est intelligent, parle trop, ne peut pas dire ce qu'il pense.

Mais l'artiste est un créateur : il sait travailler une forme qui devient organique. Il décide. Il rend l'homme meilleur. Soigne le jardin des intentions, ordonne.”

Hans Arp

Note 2 sur l'art, 1917

animaux , pensée , hommes

Hans Arp: Citations en anglais

“Sculpture should walk on the tips of its toes, unostentatious, unpretentious, and light as the spoor of an animal in snow. Art should melt into and even merge with nature itself. This is obviously contrary to painting and sculpture based on nature. By so doing, art will rid itself more and more of self-centredness, virtuosity and absurdity.”

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Hans Arp

Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)
1950s

“A deep and serene silence filled her structures composed of colors and surfaces. The exclusive use of horizontal and vertical rectangular planes in the work of art, the extreme simplification, exerted a decisive influence on my work. Here I found, stripped down to the limit, the essential elements of all earthly constructions: the bursting, upward surge of the lines and the planes toward the sky, the verticality of pure life, and the vast equilibrium, the sheer horizontality and expansiveness of dreamlike peace. Her work was for me a symbol of a divinely built 'house' which man in his vanity has ravaged and sullied.”

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Hans Arp

a remark on the art of Sophie Taeuber, whom he later married.
in Abstract Painting Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 58
1960s

“A painting or sculpture not modeled on any real object is every bit as concrete and sensuous as a leaf or a stone.... [but] it is an incomplete art which privileges the intellect to the detriment of the senses... [art must be like.. ] fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant or a child in it's mother's womb.”

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Hans Arp

Notes From a Dada Diary, published in 1932; as quoted by Anna Moszynska, in Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 113
1930s

“Then we went down to his work room, in the horrible beautiful Merz grotto [the 'Merz-Haus', built by Kurt Schwitters, where broken wheels paired with matchboxes, wire lattices with brushes without bristles, rusted wheels with curious Merz cucumbers… How often did we 'p-lay' in this room! Schwitters called playing, considering the sweat, working. There we glued together our paper pictures, and as I tossed away one of my glued-together works one morning, Schwitters asked, 'You don't like it? Can I have it?' – 'What do you want with this failed piece of toast?' Schwitters took a good look at it and said, 'I'll put what's on top on the bottom, I'll stick a little Merz nose in this corner and I'll sign the bottom Kurt Schwitters.' And, yes indeed, this collage became a wonderful picture by Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters was a wizard, just as Hokusai was a wizard.”

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Hans Arp

In 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling – Memories of Kurt Schwitters Hans Arp 1956; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken - commissioned by Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam - NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, pp. 140-141
1950s

“Automatic poetry comes straight out of the poet's bowels or out of any other of his organs that has accumulated reserves... He crows, swears, moans, stammers, yodels, according to his mood... His poems are like nature; they stink, laugh, and rhyme like nature. Foolishness, or at least what men calls foolishness is as precious to him as a sublime piece of rhetoric. For in nature a broken twig is equal in beauty and importance to the clouds and the stars.”

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Hans Arp

Source: 1940s, Abstract Art, Concrete Art (c. 1942), p. 118-119

“[art] urges man to identify himself with nature.”

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Hans Arp

Source: 1940s, Abstract Art, Concrete Art (c. 1942), p. 118

“The man who speaks and writes about art should refrain from censuring or pontificating. He will thus avoid doing anything foolish, for in the presence of primordial depth all art is but dream and nature.”

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Hans Arp

Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)
1950s

“In recent times, Surrealist painters have used descriptive illusionistic academic methods.”

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Hans Arp

In a letter to Polish poet Jan Brzekowski, ca. 1930, co-publisher of the Franco-Polish magazine 'L'art contemporain'; from Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs, Hans Arp, Gallimard, Paris 1966, p. 63
Arp's critical quote refers to the creation of art by the French Surrealists in which Jean Arp participated for a few years and then departed.
1930s

“We [Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber ] painted embroidered and made collages. All these works were drawn from the simplest forms and were probably the first examples of concrete art. These works are realities pure and independent with no meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected all mimesis and description, giving free reign to the elementary and spontaneous.”

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Hans Arp

Arp's quote, on the cooperation with his future wife Sophie Taeuber ca. 1916; as quoted in: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 65
1910-20s

“Concretion signifies the material process of condensation, hardening, coagulating, thickening, growing together. Concretion designates the solidification of a mass. Concretion designates curdling, the curdling of the earth and the heavenly bodies. Concretion designates solidification, the mass of the stone, the plant, the animal, the man. Concretion is something that has grown. I want my work to find it.”

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Hans Arp

Jean Arp (1931), as quoted in: Eric Robertson (2006) Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor, p. 108
1930s

“Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.”

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Hans Arp

Quoted in: Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 66
Attributed from posthumous publications

“Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.”

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Hans Arp

quote in Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories, Viking, 1972, p. 231
Attributed from posthumous publications

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