Jean Arp

Transformation of the Relief “Head with Green Nose” from 1923, 1964

painted wood relief

Transformation and the processual constitute an essential aspect of Arp’s artistic approach. The idea of destroying one of one’s own works so that one can then create something new from the fragments is part of this principle. Many of Arp’s sculptures were created in this way. Sometimes a plaster cast of an old sculpture was produced specifically to be cut apart and reassembled in a new way, becoming the starting point for a new sculpture. In the case of Transformation of the Relief “Head with Green Nose” from 1923, Arp’s method was even more severe: He took the original, a relief from his Surrealist period, and sawed it into pieces, then stacked the resulting shapes atop one another to create a new work.