Turner Contemporary is bringing the first exhibition of Jean Arp's work in a public gallery to the UK since his death in 1966 in collaboration with the Kröller-Müller Museum in The Netherlands. This landmark exhibition comprises over 70 loans of work, the majority of which have never been on display in the UK. As well as drawings, collages, paintings, wood reliefs and sculptures, the exhibition explores Arp’s poetry, adding a new dimension to his biomorphic sculptures with flashes of the artist’s ingenuity.
Alongside this major new exhibition in Margate we are delighted to present 'Ohne Titel', a powerful gouache from the decisive period of Arp’s career after the Second World War following the death of his beloved wife Sophie Taeuber-Arp and return to the studio in Meudon outside of Paris. In this dramatic work, Arp evokes a sense of chaos through the seemingly random pattern of forms scattered across the page. Arp was particularly interested in the Surrealist notion of the unconscious and accident, which he developed in a series of ‘chance collages’ composed of torn pieces of paper dropped onto a larger sheet and pasted where they happened to fall. Arp recreates this practice in ‘Ohne Titel’ in an arrangement of shapes that echo the balance of his early Constellations and Configurations series.
Arp: The Poetry of Forms
Turner Contemporary
Margate
13 October 2017 - 14 January 2018