Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction

Sophie Taeuber-Arp was born in 1889 in Davos, Switzerland, and trained at the interdisciplinary Debschitz School in Munich. In 1914, she began a successful applied arts practice in Zurich, where she also taught textile design and participated in the Dada movement. Starting in the late 1920s, Taeuber-Arp completed several architectural and interior design projects, most significantly the Aubette entertainment complex in Strasbourg. When she moved to Paris in 1929, she turned her attention to abstract paintings and painted wood reliefs. During the Nazi occupation, Taeuber-Arp spent her final years in the South of France, and died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning in 1943. Anne Umland is The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Walburga Krupp is an art historian and curator based in Remagen, Germany, and Research Assistant for the Sophie Taeuber-Arp publishing project, Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. Charlotte Healy is Research Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.