Shell Crystal (Coquille-cristal)
Jean Arp French, born Germany
Not on view
Made near the end of the artist’s life, Shell Crystal (Coquille-cristal) serves as a late example of Arp’s biomorphic inventions, derived from observations of nature’s organic purity and growth processes. The artist started making these three-dimensional, free-standing forms in 1930, modelling them first in plaster and then translating them into either stone or bronze. In this later stage of his practice, plaster allowed Arp the freedom to experiment with asymmetrical, curving forms that, in their final iterations, give the allusion of imminent metamorphosis. Referring to this biomorphic work as l’art concret (or concrete art), Arp expressed a desire to create art as "concrete and sensual as a leaf or stone."[1]
[1] A.D.S. Donaldson and Ann Stephen. J.W. Power: Abstraction-Création, Paris 1934, Sydney: University Art Gallery, the University of Sydney, 2012, p. 106.
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