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Fine Art Focus: Jean (Hans) Arp

Nov 21, 2025 | Arp, fine art, French, historical

In 1904, after leaving the École des Arts et Métiers in Strasbourg, he went to Paris where he published his poetry for the first time. From 1905 to 1907, he studied at the Weimarer Kunstschule in Germany, where he met his uncle, German landscape painter Carl Arp. In 1908 he returned to Paris, where he attended the Académie Julian. Arp was a founder-member of the first modern art alliance in Switzerland Moderne Bund in Lucerne in 1911, participating in their exhibitions from 1911 to 1913.

In 1912 he went to Munich and called on Wassily Kandinsky, the influential Russian painter and art theorist. Arp was encouraged by him in his researches and exhibited with the Der Blaue Reiter group. Later that year, he took part in a major exhibition in Zürich, along with Henri Matisse, Robert Delaunay, and Kandinsky. In Berlin in 1913, he was taken up by Herwarth Walden, the dealer and magazine editor who was at that time one of the most powerful figures in the European avant-garde.

In 1915 he moved to Switzerland to take advantage of Swiss neutrality. Arp later told the story of how, when he was notified to report to the German consulate in Zürich, he pretended to be mentally ill in order to avoid being drafted into the German Army: after crossing himself whenever he saw a portrait of Paul von Hindenburg, Arp was given paperwork on which he was told to write his date of birth on the first blank line. Accordingly, he wrote “16/9/87”; he then wrote “16/9/87” on every other line as well, then drew one final line beneath them and, “without worrying too much about accuracy”, calculated their sum.

Hans Richter, describing this story, noted that “they [the German authorities] believed him.”

In 1916 Hugo Ball opened the Cabaret Voltaire, which was to become the centre of Dada activities in Zürich for a group that included Arp, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, and others. In 1920, as Hans Arp, along with Max Ernst and the social activist Alfred Grünwald, he set up the Cologne Dada group. In 1925 his work also appeared in the first exhibition of the Surrealist group at the Galérie Pierre in Paris.

Jean Arp: Leather Tote Bag
Price range: $55.00 through $59.00

Fine Art Focus: Wassily Kandinsky

Sep 19, 2025 | cgk.ink writes:, design, fine art, French, historical, kandinsky

Kandinsky_-_Vassily_Kandinsky_by_Adolf_Elnain_Photo_credits_-_Georges_Meguerditchian

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (b. 1866) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896, Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe’s private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. During this time, he was first the teacher and then the partner of German artist Gabriele Münter. He returned to Moscow in 1914 after the outbreak of World War I. Following the Russian Revolution, Kandinsky “became an insider in the cultural administration of Anatoly Lunacharsky” and helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting. However, by then, “his spiritual outlook… was foreign to the argumentative materialism of Soviet society” and opportunities beckoned in Germany, to which he returned in 1920. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

Four Parts Vasily Kandinsky French, born Russia 1932

Delicate Tension no. 85, Kandinsky (1923)

Delicate Tension no. 85 was executed by Kandinsky at the Bauhaus during the prestigious school’s most rationalist period under the directorship of Theo van Doesburg, from 1923 to 1925. During these years the initial Expressionistic style of this avant-garde centre evolved towards greater commitment to the Constructivist aesthetic which was spreading internationally. Kandinsky delved more deeply in his investigation of the correspondences between forms and colours, and the geometric shapes found in his works from this period, which is sometimes described as “cold, ” are basically the circle and the triangle, which he considered to be “the two primary, most strongly contrasting plane figures.”

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