Modeled 1938; cast by 1949

Growth

Jean (Hans) Arp

French (born Germany), 1886 - 1966

Jean Arp based his art on an ethical rejection of the corrupt values that he perceived in modern European life: overreliance on rationality, blind faith in technology, greed, competitiveness, and a generalized belligerence that was expressed so devastatingly in the First World War. In his effort to counteract those attitudes, Arp found traditional artistic methods wholly insufficient. Instead, he invented new sculptural conventions responding to nature’s purity, sensuality, and organic growth processes. This idea led him in the 1930s to develop the type of abstract sculpture of which Growth is an outstanding example. As the slender form rises in smooth, shiny, boundlessly flowing bronze, bulbous appendages erupt, evoking both human and plant forms. Growth metamorphoses in the viewer’s perception as one circles around it.