Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Another of our key inspirations is Sophie Taeuber-Arp, who was multi-disciplinary in the fullest sense possible, her polymathic creative approach stemming from a philosophy that art is always relevant to, must be woven into, the dailiness of life. This expansiveness was radical during the First World War, when she was developing her practice, and applying her singular visual style to different formats without discrimination for so-called ‘applied arts’. Works on paper, painting, textiles, sculpture, design, architecture, dance, and performance come together in Taeber-Arp’s back catalogue with a spirited fluidity.
Early in her career, Taeuber-Arp studied under influential choreographer Rudoft von Laban, and was a key mover, along with husband Hans (Jean) Arp, in the scene of Zurich club and noted birthplace of Dada, Cabaret Voltaire. Formative years spent ensconced in dance and performance made an indelible mark on her style, and a sense of fluid, embodied movement can often be felt in her explorations into geometric abstraction. One thing that sets Taeuber-Arp from her modernist contemporaries is that she doesn’t seem to have arrived at geometric abstraction through a process of paring back, but rather her training in textiles led to an almost instant decision to draw directly on the grid sequences found in weaving.
Her early Vertical-Horizontal series is among her most celebrated, and articulates this unconventional, inventive modular colour scheme inspired by the structure of textiles. Her use of graph paper to make her drawings became a tool, or organising principle, with which she could move freely between mediums while keeping the same set of structures and shapes as a jumping-off point, and the foundation of a new language for abstraction.
In 1937, Sophie Taeuber-Arp wrote in a letter to her goddaughter that ‘Something to which I attribute great value […] is gaiety.’ Within the precision of her abstractions’ interplay between colour and form, is also, as scores of critics have observed, a joyfulness and play. Her output was informed by the belief that beautiful objects can be functional, and the functional can be beautiful, and that this process of exploration can also be fun. Along with friends such as Sonia and Robert Delauney and Alexander Calder, this multi-dimensional approach formed a progressive wall of resistance to the age-old divisions between applied arts and fine arts. That a practical object in the home can also function as an art piece is an idea we come back to constantly at Palefire Studio, and we’re always looking at ways to blur those lines, whether it’s by hand-painting our statement lighting like a canvas, or creating table lamps that are also sculptures in their own right.