Manicured Relief

1930

Jean (Hans) Arp
French, born Germany (Alsace), 1886–1966

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.

Status: On View, Gallery 289
Department: Modern Art

Artist: Jean (Hans) Arp
Title: Manicured Relief
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1930
Medium: Painted wood
Inscriptions: none
Dimensions: 33 × 45.7 × 7 cm (13 × 18 × 2 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Frank B. Hubachek
Reference Number: 1951.200
Copyright: © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Ionel Jianou, Jean Arp (Paris: Edition d’Art, 1973), p. 59.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute, 1952.
Münster, Germany, Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Reliefs: Formprobleme zwischen Malerei und Skulptur im 20. Jahrhundert, June 1–August 3, 1980.
Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from the Art Institute of Chicago, Oct. 6, 2013–Feb. 16, 2014, no cat. no.
Dallas, Nasher Sculpture Center, The Nature of Arp, Sept. 15, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019; Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Apr. 13–Sept. 2, 2019.

Acquired by Mary Reynolds (1891–1950), Paris, by 1950 [“List of Works of Art going to Chicago,” n.d., Mary Reynolds Collection, Ryerson & Burnham Archives, Art Institute of Chicago, 1951.1, Folder 4.2; photocopy in curatorial file]; by descent to Mr. Frank B. Hubachek (1894–1986), Chicago, 1950; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, May 21, 1951 [Committee on Painting and Sculpture meeting minutes, May 21, 1951; photocopy in curatorial file].

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