Jean Arp

Acquired directly from the artist's estate circa 1976

Carola Giedion-Welcker, Jean Arp, New York, 1957, no. 31, p. 109 (titled Garland of Buds II)
Jean Arp: From the Collections of Mme Marguerite Arp and Arthur and Madeleine Lejwa (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1972, illustration of another cast n.p.
Ionel Jianou, Jean Arp, Paris, 1973, no. 31, p. 67
Stefanie Poley, Hans Arp: Die Formensprache im plastischen Werk, Stuttgart, 1978, illustration of another cast p. 30
Margherita Andreotti, The Early Sculpture of Jean Arp, London, 1989, no. 65, illustration of the marble p. 259

This work is in very good condition. Reddish golden brown patina. Minor patina rubbing at the extreme tips of the bud element. A few tiny nicks to the patina at the extreme edge of the base.
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The expertly carved Couronne de bourgeons II embodies the transcendent physical beauty that is the hallmark of Arp’s most successful sculptures, characterized by their unblemished surfaces and smooth curvilinear forms. Margherita Andreotti writes about this particular work, “The repetition of the bud or breastlike shape in a circular configuration…evokes memories of the same radiating pattern in other natural forms, from the petals of a flower to the rays of the sun… The merging of human and plant features reflected in the sculpture’s title anticipates a whole series of plantlike torsos starting with Growth of 1938 and continuing into Arp’s later years… Of even greater consequence for Arp’s later work, however, is the development of the so-called “bud” form, a full, rounded shape ending in a point… It later became one of Arp’s favorite sculptural forms, recurring in countless works from the 1930s onward. The associations of this form with natural generation and growth, ideas so essential to Arp’s thinking and its visual fusion of human and natural connotations no doubt contributed to its special appeal for Arp” (Marghertia Andreotti, op. cit., pp. 244-47).

Arp’s interest in man, nature, art and sculptural forms that evoked and blended the three is of paramount importance to his oeuvre. Arp wrote: “Art is a fruit that grows in man like a fruit on a plant or a child in its mother’s womb” (quoted in ibid., p. 260). At the heart of Arp’s success is the organic beauty of his sculptures, which seem to manifest from a vision unencumbered by formal restraints. In 1944 Max Ernst wrote, “Arp’s hypnotic language takes us back to a lost paradise, to cosmic secrets and teaches us to understand the language of the universe” (quoted in ibid., p. 261).