"Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother"s womb," once commented Jean Arp--a remarkable twentieth-century sculptor, painter and poet associated with and a forefather of the Dada and Surrealist movements. The avant-garde artist was born on September 16, 1887 in Strasbourg, France, where he studied at the Ecole des Arts et M?â?®tiers. In 1905, he transferred to the Weimar Academy and then to Paris at the Acad?â?®mie Julian in 1908, and subsequent to graduation resumed his painting in Weggis, Switzerland in isolation. By 1912, Jean Arp had become...
in man", as he had stated.

Jean Arp visited the United States in 1949 and 1950 to finish a monumental wood and metal relief for Harvard University; in 1958, he composed a mural relief for the UNESCO Building in Paris. He was awarded the international prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and the 1964 Pittsburgh International. Arp died on June 7, 1966 in Solduno, Switzerland, survived by his second wife, Marguerite Arp-Hagenbach. A dominant personality within abstract art, Dada and Surrealism, his reliefs and sculptures have had a decisive influence upon the sculpture of this century.