Seen and Heard
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Out of this World: Dali and the Surrealists, Oklahoma City Art Museum, January 22-March 22, 1998.
Celebrate! Sculpture: The Figure, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, September 1, 1998-February 14, 1999.
World War I and the Rise of Modernism, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 9-October 18, 2015.
In this sculpture, Jean Arp translates the sensuous curves of the female body into an abstract form. The golden, highly polished, reflective metal sculpture is visually seductive. With it, Arp explored the Surrealist themes of metamorphosis, flux, and transformation.
Like other Paris-based Surrealist artists and writers, Arp sought to reveal a higher reality. Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s exploration of the human unconscious, the Surrealists recorded and painted their dreams, sought to create in a state of "pure psychic automatism," and explored altered states of consciousness.
Possibly Boris (1904-1996) and Sophie (1905-1992) Leavitt, Hanover, PA [1];
With Albert Loeb Gallery, New York;
Purchased from Albert Loeb Gallery by Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland [2];
Purchased from Galerie Beyeler by Robert Elkon Gallery, New York, by 1963 [3];
Purchased from the Robert Elkon Gallery by the Friends of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1963;
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1963.
NOTES:
[1] According to Arie Hartog, ed. and Kai Fischer, Hans Arp: Sculptures – a Critical Survey (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012), 270.
[2] According to E. Beyeler, Galerie Beyeler, in a letter to Charles Moffett, December 9, 1969, copy in NAMA curatorial files.
[3] According to Judith Wolfe, Robert Elkon Gallery, in a letter to Charles Moffett, November 12, 1969, copy in NAMA curatorial files.
Robert K. Sanford, “Friends of Art Debate and Buy,” The Kansas City Star (January 25, 1963), 1, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 201, (repro.).
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 221, (repro.).
Arie Hartog, ed. and Kai Fischer, Hans Arp: Sculptures – a Critical Survey (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012), 270, no. 77, as Form Heard and Seen, Bronze 1/5.
