Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate Modern

Sophie Taeuber-Arp isn't as well known an artist as she should be and Tate Modern has put on the first ever retrospective of her work in Britain and it is a joyous celebration of her life and work. Born in Switzerland in 1889, she was educated and went to art school in Munich, met her husband Hans Arp (also an artist), became part of the dada movement, exhibited with Kandinsky and Sonia Delaunay and sadly died in Switzerland in 1943. I hadn't heard of her before this exhibition but she is now firmly on my radar.

Something I immediately noticed was that her works were relatively small in size and were created for the 'average' home. They weren't created as big public works that could be bought by the rich or public institutions, these are works for me and you. They are also very colourful and largely abstract. Apparently Taeuber-Arp came to abstraction through dissecting textiles and many, at least the early works, are quite linear in composition. She also used a wide range of materials in her work, using graphite, crayons, gouache, watercolour, oils and other media like wool to make 'appliqué paintings'. 

As you'd expect from a dadaist she was involved in lots of different things within the movement and turned her hand to most things. She created puppets for the Swiss Marionette Theatre and a series of 'dada heads' like hat stands and she turned the wood herself. One of the 'heads' is a portrait of her husband. I loved the puppets and it would be fun to see them in action (I think there's a video in the exhibition but I missed it). 

As well as being an artist Taeuber-Arp was also an architect and designer and some of her furniture is on display, all modular and functional and could easily be in a furniture shop today. There's also a gorgeous rug hung on the wall that she designed and made and it looked very deep and rich. She used her rugs and tapestries as the basis for creating other designs and there's a cabinet full of her experimental watercolour designs based on the rug. I like the idea of riffing on a design, developing it for a different work. 

As I walked through the exhibition I noticed that the colour palette became deeper and richer before becoming very sparse as I came to her later works. The works became more angular and geometrical as she delved deeper into her own abstraction. Some of the later works were simple line drawings in graphite and/or ink from during the Second World War when she didn't have access to a studio or lots of materials. There's also a gorgeous landscape drawn entirely in graphite that shows what a great draughtswoman she was. 

Sadly, Sophie died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty stove as she sheltered from the war in Switzerland in 1943 at the age of 53. It's very sad that we don't have her more mature works - who knows what she might have created after the war? Her friend Sonia Delaunay 'discovered' black in her 60s - what would Sophie have discovered?

Sophie lived and created in one of the most artistically stimulating times - the first half of the 20th Century. Der Blaue Reiter were working in Munich when she was there and dada sprung into life when she was ready to create, just as with Sonia Delaunay. There's a lovely photo of Sophie and Sonia in beachwear that Sonia designed at the opening of the exhibition. Sophie exhibited over the years with Sonia and with Vassily Kandinsky so that's pretty good company to be in. She discovered her own form of abstraction and pursued it for the rest of her life. I assume she isn't more well-known partly because she died during the war so wasn't there to celebrate the peace and create more great works. I wonder how she would have responded to the Abstract Expressionists and their huge canvases.  

This really is a very good exhibition that provides a good selection of her works across her lifetime. When I was there it was busy with a steady stream of people but not crowded, and I liked that since I could linger over the details of paintings without feeling I was hogging them. It seems to have been an unexpected success since Tate has run out of catalogues and is having to get more reprinted despite it being open for another couple of months. I'll definitely go back to see it again after the school holidays to spend more time with this wonderful artist. I need to learn more.