A definitive survey on the Dada participant and pioneer of abstraction between art and craft, spanning her textiles, marionettes, stained glass, paintings and more Accompanying the first retrospective of Taeuber-Arp's work in the United States in 40 years, Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstractionis a comprehensive survey of this multifaceted abstract artist's innovative and wide-ranging body of work. Her background in the applied arts and dance, her involvement in the Zurich Dada movement and her projects for architectural spaces were essential to her development of a uniquely versatile and vibrant abstract vocabulary. Through her artistic output and various professional alliances, Taeuber-Arp consistently challenged the historically constructed boundaries separating fine art from craft and design. This richly illustrated catalog explores the artist's interdisciplinary and cross-pollinating approach to abstraction through some 400 works, including textiles, beadwork, polychrome marionettes, architectural and interior designs, stained glass windows, works on paper, paintings and relief sculptures. It also features 15 essays that examine the full sweep of Taeuber-Arp's career. Arranged into six chapters that follow the exhibition's sections, these essays trace the progression of Taeuber-Arp's creative production both chronologically and thematically. A comprehensive illustrated chronology, the first essay on Taeuber-Arp's materials and techniques, and an exhibition checklist based on new research and analysis detail the expansive nature of Taeuber-Arp's production. Sophie Taeuber-Arpwas born in 1889 in Davos, Switzerland, and trained at the interdisciplinary Debschitz School in Munich. In 1914, she began a successful applied arts practice in Zurich, where she also taught textile design and participated in the Dada movement. Starting in the late 1920s, Taeuber-Arp completed several architectural and interior design projects, most significantly the Aubette entertainment complex in Strasbourg. When she moved to Paris in 1929, she turned her attention to abstract paintings and painted wood reliefs. During the Nazi occupation, Taeuber-Arp spent her final years in the South of France, and died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning in 1943.

An intimate look at the life and career of the Dada hero known for the unique joy of her work across mediums, authored by her great-niece and buttressed with archival material Even when performing at Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire during Dada's halcyon days, Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) stood out from the crowd: her choreography, paintings, sculptures, puppets and textiles were all infused with a unique joy that set her apart from her contemporaries. In this important new publication, Taeuber-Arp's great-niece pays homage to the artist's pioneering oeuvre and rich personal life. Silvia Boadella grew up with Taeuber-Arp's oeuvre to hand and draws from her memories, stories and family documents, as well as hitherto unpublished sources for this volume. Boadella provides readers for the first time with a portrait of Taeuber-Arp's personality, her private and artistic environment, connecting the phases of her life to her works, and, with the aid of numerous illustrations including photographs from the family archives, constructs a vivid experience for the reader.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp was a quiet innovator whose fame has too often been yoked to that of her husband, Jean Arp. Over time, however, she has slowly come to be seen as one of the foremost abstract artists and designers of the twentieth century. The Swiss-born Taeuber-Arp had a front row seat to the first wave of Dadaism and was, along with Mondrian and Malevich, a pioneer of Constructivism. Her singular artwork incorporated painting, sculpture, dance, fiber arts, and architecture, as hers was one of the first oeuvres to successfully bridge the divide between fine and functional art. Now Roswitha Mair has brought us the first biography of this unique polymath, illuminating not just Tauber-Arp’s own life and work, but also the various milieux and movements in which she traveled. No fan of the Dadaists and their legacy will want to miss this first English-language translation.

A creative introduction to the works of Sophie Tauber-Arp, one of the founders of the Dada art movement Born in 1889, Sophie Taeuber-Arp was an artist, dancer, designer, puppet maker, architect, and editor. Enter into the radical and radiant world of Taeuber-Arp and create your own abstract modern art along the way! Bursting with inspiring activities, the revised and expanded Meet the Artist series of activity books introduces children to internationally renowned artists in a fun and engaging way. This activity book includes a brief introduction to the artist's life, including her role as one of the founders of the Dada art movement, followed by a series of activities, such as weaving and puppet making, that explore prominent themes and ideas in Taeuber-Arp's body of work. Featuring beautiful reproductions of key artwork, and illustrated by leading contemporary illustrator Lesley Barnes, Meet the Artist: Sophie Taeuber-Arp encourages children to use art as an avenue for exploring ideas and learning new techniques to express their own experiences through art-making.

A dancer, designer, puppet maker, sculptor and painter at the heart of the Zurich Dada movement, Taeuber-Arp made Head in the wake of World War I, during a time of profound political and cultural self-questioning. Almost a century later, her witty wooden figure has lost none of its punch as an investigation of art across aesthetic and material boundaries rather than within them.

A true pioneer of modern art Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) was an artist but also a dancer, designer, puppet maker, architect, and editor. A true pioneer of modern art, for Taeuber-Arp, abstraction was never just an idea--it was her way of life. This lived abstraction plays a large part in the exhibition as the artwork on show, many together for the first time, explore how Taueber-Arp's subversive, dissident, and often revolutionary style radiated into every facet of her life and paved the way for modern artists to come. Taeuber-Arp became a teacher after studying art and dance and later taught others how to design patterns for textiles. In the terrible wake of the First World War, European civilization was on the brink of collapse, and a group of young people were rebelling from the world of destruction around them. They themselves defined themselves as nonsensical, cynical, savage, and abstract--the Dadaists. Responsible for cofounding the Dada art movement, Tauber-Arp's way with colors and shapes unlocked new possibilities in art, costume, and interior design. Liberated and yet ordered, radical yet structured, Taueber-Arp's work invites us to dance within a grid, to break boundaries by following her rules. Tied so closely with dance, poetry, and performance, Taueber-Arp created the perfect escapism from the troubled and violent society around her, making this publication a pertinent exploration of what it means to create ones own personal order in an increasingly unstable world.