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1886-1966
ÉTOILE

ÉTOILE

height (including base): 36.5cm., 14 3/8 in.

Conceived in 1939 and cast before 1949 in an edition of 5. The present work is number 1 of 4 examples cast in bronze. 1 example was executed in lead.

bronze with marble base

PROVENANCE

Curt Valentin, New York (acquired from the artist)
Myron O'Higgins-Ybarra, Chicago (acquired from the above by November 1955)
B.C. Holland Gallery, Chicago
Private Collection, St. Louis (acquired from the above on 3rd February 1964)

EXHIBITED

New York, Buchholz Gallery, Jean Arp, 1949, no. 12

LITERATURE

Carola Giedion-Welcker, Hans Arp, Stuttgart, 1957, no. 61, illustration of another cast p. 94

NOTE

From the birth of Dada in 1916 to Paris and Surrealism, Arp played an integral role in the rapidly changing dialectic of modern art. By 1925, Arp had moved to a studio at the Villa des Fusains in Montmartre, where his neighbours included Max Ernst and Joan Miró. The close proximity fostered a lifelong friendship among the young artists as well as an inevitable exchange of ideas and stylistic influence. In the present work, Arp ventures into the cosmos. It is no surprise that artists such as Miró (fig. 1), Tanguy and Calder likewise found inspiration in the constellations, and were simultaneously impressed by Arp's unique method of expressing nature through sculpture.

According to Margherita Andreotti, Arp's interest in nature over the human form represents a dramatic shift: 'Even more important in some respects is Arp's pioneering role in opening up sculpture to a new area of subject matter, nature. In the 1930s Arp's increasing preoccupation with nature led him to fashion sculptural forms capable of expressing this preoccupation without relying on the tradition of naturalism...this preoccupation with nature took many forms. It manifested itself in Arp's sources of inspiration and specifically in his fascination with certain categories of natural objects such as stones, shells, fruits, leaves and so forth. Arp's interest in nature was also directed at what he perceived to be the basic forces and principles underlying nature, the forces of growth and transformation, and the principles of symmetry and constellation' (M. Andreotti, The Early Sculpture of Jean Arp, Ann Arbor, 1989, pp. 254 & 259).

Arp's overwhelming desire to reconcile man and nature, while integrating art into everyday life, was his primary concern which he expressed in an innovative vocabulary uniquely his own. According to A.M. Hammacher, 'The secret of Arp's artistic character is, I think, to be found in the very fact he was not an outright Surrealist. His craving for a simplicity in which the complexity of his mind might lose itself and for a compact and sometimes open form (the Star of 1939, etc.) led his creative mind, which was so closely affined to the Surrealist mentality, to develop a remarkably personal style. The titles of his works, to which he gave a great deal of attention, and some of which he later changed, suggest that his literary work cannot be separated from his sculptures' (A.M. Hammacher, Modern Sculpture, Tradition and Innovation, New York, 1988, pp. 210 & 211). In fact, Arp composed a poem published in his 1941 book Poèmes sans prénoms of which the subject is the sculpture Étoile.

Fig. 1 Joan Miró, Femme à la blonde aisselle coiffant sa chevelure à la lueur des étoiles, 5th March 1940, gouache and oil wash on paper, Cleveland Museum of Art, USA

L06008--3cmrh-comp.tif or Arpetoile