Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction

Over the course of her almost three-decade-long career, Sophie Taeuber-Arp worked as a designer of textiles, beadwork, costumes, furniture, and interiors, as well as an applied arts professor, dancer, puppet maker, architect, painter, sculptor, illustrator, and magazine editor. Through her exceptionally diverse artistic output and various professional alliances, Taeuber-Arp consistently challenged the historically constructed boundaries separating art, craft, and design.

Published in conjunction with the first retrospective of Taeuber-Arp’s work in the United States in nearly forty years, and the first-ever retrospective in the United Kingdom, Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction is the most comprehensive survey of this multifaceted abstract artist’s innovative and wide-ranging body of work. The catalogue explores the artist’s interdisciplinary and cross-pollinating approach to abstraction through some 400 works, including textiles, beadwork, polychrome marionettes, architectural and interior designs, stained glass windows, works on paper, paintings, and relief sculptures. Essays by curators and scholars examine the full sweep of Taeuber-Arp’s career, outlining the scope of her creative production at different points in time. A comprehensive illustrated chronology, the first essay published on Taeuber-Arp’s materials and techniques, and a scholarly exhibition checklist based on new research and analysis detail the expansive nature of Taeuber-Arp’s production.