Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Recently I went to the Sophie Taeuber-Arp show at MoMA.
Twice actually.
Taeuber-Arp is the best artist I've never heard of.
The "Arp" part of her name is recognizable through her marriage to the Dada-ist who gets an occasional mention.
But Taeuber-Arp's work has been less seen, until this major retrospective gave it a new look.
The show "Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction" displays an immense amount of work.
The NYT review rightly calls her a "polymath" and the show fully captures her "wandering creativity".
Here is my recollection of how the galleries are organized:
Textiles
Beadwork
Puppets
Sculptures
Interior Design
Furniture
Architecture
Painting
Drawings
Prints
Excellent curation is worth noting here because with so much work in the show, a massive effort must have been made to locate, evaluate and secure everything. The curatorial credits are as follows:
Anne Umland, Curator of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art
Eva Reifert, Curator, Nineteenth-Century and Modern Art, Kunstmuseum Basel
Natalia Sidlina, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern
Walburga Krupp, independent curator
With more than 300 objects on loan from 50 collections, the show is big. In the later galleries it feels like things may run a little long, but not too long because the after-feeling is "I can’t believe I hadn't heard of her before.”
More information about the exhibition here and here.
https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5206
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/arts/design/sophie-taeuber-arp-review-moma-dada.html
Above, showing de-colorized Dynamic Circles 1934.
