Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Born in Davos, Grisons, Suisse on 19 January 1889.
Died in Zürich (Switzerland) on 13 January 1943.
Swiss, later French · Dada, geometric abstraction, Constructivism and Concrete art · textile, sculpture, painting, design and architecture
Sophie Taeuber-Arp (Davos, 19 January 1889 – Zurich, 13 January 1943) was a foundational figure in geometric abstraction and European modernism. Trained in applied arts in St Gallen, at the Debschitz School in Munich and in Hamburg, she developed from the outset a practice that refused to separate fine art, craft, design and everyday life. She returned to Switzerland during the First World War, met Jean Arp in 1915 and taught textile design at Zurich’s School of Applied Arts from 1916 to 1929.
Taeuber-Arp played a decisive role in Zurich Dada. Alongside expressionist dance in the circle of Rudolf von Laban, she produced textiles, embroidery, geometric compositions, objects and sculpture. In 1918 her turned-wood marionettes for Carlo Gozzi’s «King Stag» transformed theatre into a Constructive vocabulary.
Her «Dada Heads» of 1918–1920, several examples of which are held by the Centre Pompidou, became icons of the avant-garde by combining sculpture, painted object and Dada language.
From the second half of the 1920s her work expanded into architecture. In Strasbourg she collaborated with Jean Arp and Theo van Doesburg on the Aubette, one of the major integrated environments of the European avant-garde. After settling near Paris in 1929, she concentrated on painting, reliefs and geometric abstraction, joined Cercle et Carré and Abstraction-Création, and in 1937 became one of the driving forces behind the international journal «Plastique / Plastic».
War forced her to leave the Paris region. After several years in southern France she returned to Switzerland at the end of 1942 and died accidentally in Zurich in January 1943. Her oeuvre spans textiles, furniture, puppets, painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, graphic design and publishing, held together by a consistent exploration of rhythm, colour and structure.
Her standing is now international. MoMA lists 36 works online; Kunstmuseum Basel displays works including «Équilibre» (1934). The major retrospective «Sophie Taeuber-Arp.
Living Abstraction» was organised jointly by Kunstmuseum Basel, Tate Modern and MoMA in 2021–2022. Since 2025 SIK-ISEA has been preparing a new catalogue raisonné scheduled through 2029. The market has followed this institutional recognition: in April 2025 the unique 1936 relief «Relief rond en quatre hauteurs…» set a new auction record of about USD 3.34 million at Christie’s Paris.
