Nov 28, 2023 · The famous Dada artist who feigned mental illness to escape German military service and member of the Abstraction-Création movement, Hans Arp, was perhaps the most fascinating personality of the 20th century.

Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp (/ ɑːr p /; German:; 16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966), better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist.

Fleeing the horrors of World War I, Arp moved to Zürich, where he helped found the Dada movement at the international and independent art space founded by two poets (Sally Hemmings and Hugo Ball) whose stated aim was to create chaos.

Jean Arp was a French sculptor, painter, and poet who was one of the leaders of the European avant-garde in the arts during the first half of the 20th century. Arp was of French Alsatian and German ancestry, and, thus, his parents gave him both French and German names.

Together with Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara and Richard Huelsenbeck, Hans (Jean) Arp was a founder member of the Dada movement, which had its legendary start on 5 February 1916 in the "Cabaret Voltaire" in Zurich. Arp published poems and text collages, …

Although mostly known as a visual artist and poet, as well as recognized for his contributions to Dada, Hans (Jean) Arp also facilitated the diffusion of knowledge about modern art, and Cubism in particular, throughout the German-speaking world.

For example, he was a co-founder of the Dada movement in Zurich and was active in surrealist circles in Paris in the 1920s. In 1928, together with Theo van Doesburg and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, he undertook the renovation of the former military building Aubette in Strasburg into a modern leisure complex.

At the forefront of Western Modernism, he was a pioneer of abstract art and a pivotal contributor to the shaping of Dadaism while also playing a crucial role in the development of Surrealism. Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp was born in 1886 to a French-speaking Alsatian mother and a German father in Strasbourg in the Alsace-Lorraine region.

Hans Arp is a familiar figure of classical Modernism and was a key contributor in the development of Dada and Surrealism in the early twentieth century. Focusing his attention on everyday objects, Arp created his own unique ‘object language’ using a nonsensical vocabulary: plate, fork, knife, clock, tie, moustache, lips, breasts.

Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp (; German: [aʁp]; 16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966), better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist.