Dada Head sculpture
wood, paint, metal wire
c. 1920
Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943)
Switzerland
Taeuber-Arp made a series of 'Dada' heads from about 1918 to the early 1920s.
#dada #head #sculpture #sophietaeuberarp #switzerland #modernart #modernsculpture #dadasculpture #dadahead #c1920 #art #wood
This polychrome Dada Head (cat. rais. no. 1918/9), which belonged to Jean Arp, is probably the first in a series of turned wooden Dada heads that Taeuber created in Zurich between 1918 and 1920. She settled there in 1914, after extensive studies in decorative arts (embroidery, weaving, and woodworking), first in St. Gallen, then in Munich from 1910 (in the Workshop for Free and Applied Arts, founded in 1901–1902 by Obrist and von Debschitz, both influenced by Jugendstil and the Vienna School), and finally in Hamburg in 1912–1913. It was in Zurich, in the autumn of 1915, that she met Jean Arp, who introduced her the following year to the Dada group at the Cabaret Voltaire. Challenging the traditional hierarchy between applied arts and fine arts, the couple began to create, in addition to tapestries, "sculptural vessels" in turned wood, such as the Dada Cup of 1916 (Strasbourg, MAMC). This latter work foreshadows the spherical form mounted on a stem of the Head of 1918. Its geometric schematics bring it close to the puppets made of cones, spheres, and cylinders that Taeuber created the same year for the play *The Stag King*, an adaptation of a tale by Carlo Gozzi (the 18th-century Venetian satirist) and a modern allegory of psychoanalytic debates. This latter commission brought Sophie Taeuber great success. *The Head*, whose decoration is reminiscent of the works of Klimt and the Wiener Werkstätten (Taeuber worked in one of their Zurich branches in 1917), is more abstract. The subsequent versions, on the other hand, are closer to puppets with their protruding noses and resemble humorous portraits. One of them depicts Jean Arp in 1918 (*Dada Head. Portrait of Jean Arp*, on loan to the Kunsthaus Zurich); it was followed by a self-portrait with pendants (1920, New York, MoMA). The existence of two other heads - Head with antenna, reproduced in the magazine Zeltweg (1919) and in Merz, no. 6, and Head with branch of pearls - is attested only by photographs.
Tête dada (Dada Head)
painted wood
1918
Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943)
Switzerland
The first of a series of 'dada' heads that the artist completed in the late teens to early 1920s.
#art #sculpture #dada #dadahead #surrealism #sophietaeuberarp #switzerland #modernart #modernsculpture #handmade
