About this artwork
In 1917 Jean (Hans) Arp began creating wooden reliefs from curvilinear pieces of painted and layered wood. Starting with individual forms based on abstract drawings, he worked with a carpenter to cut amoeba-like shapes and then assembled them into composite structures that hold a hybrid position between painting and sculpture. The title, Manicured Relief, suggests that the top form’s gray-green extremities might represent painted fingernails, which became popular among women in the mid-1920s. The feminine association also carries over to the work’s first owner: Mary Reynolds, an artist and avant-garde bookbinder who, like Arp, was based in Paris in the 1930s.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Modern Art
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Artist
- Jean (Hans) Arp
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Title
- Manicured Relief
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Place
- France (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1930
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Medium
- Painted wood
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Inscriptions
- none
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Dimensions
- 33 × 45.7 × 7 cm (13 × 18 × 2 1/4 in.)
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Credit Line
- Gift of Frank B. Hubachek
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Reference Number
- 1951.200
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Copyright
- © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Extended information about this artwork
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