“Art is a fruit that grows in man like a fruit on a plant or a child in its mother\'s womb\".

Jean Arp or Hans Arp (16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966) was a German-French sculptor, painter, poet, and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper. When Arp spoke in German he referred to himself as \"Hans\", and when he spoke in French he referred to himself as \"Jean.

Something of a one-man movement, Jean Arp could (and did) make anything into art. Best-known for his biomorphic sculptures, and one of the most versatile creative minds of the early twentieth century, he fashioned sculptures out of plaster, stone and bronze, and also expressed himself in paintings, drawings, collages and poems. His approach to form, often referred to as organic abstraction, was remarkably consistent: his wavy lines suggested plants, body parts and other natural motifs, while remaining entirely abstract. Like an extraterrestrial on earth for the very first time, Arp\'s genius was in presenting visual information as if he is first seeing it. Transformation, growth, fecundity, and metamorphosis are among the dominant themes in his work.

Arp felt that modern society had become over-dependent on reason. He hoped to redress the balance by developing an art that consciously evoked the forms and laws of nature without copying them. Arp felt that he could incorporate chance within artistic production, comparing the role of the artist to a plant bearing fruit. According to the Laws of Chance shows Arp playing with random composition, in this case dropping painted pieces of paper. The rounded shapes in his paintings and reliefs may suggest clouds or planets, while the ‘laws’ of the title are those of flux and chance that characterise the ‘inaccessible order’ of nature. Arp’s interest in chance extended to the making of his reliefs. He ordered them from a craftsman, but left his instructions ambiguous in order to encourage the craftsman’s free interpretation.

Arp\'s work is non-representational, yet firmly rooted in nature. His most abstract compositions suggest organic forms. This keeps the viewer curious, and provides a consistent framework for satisfying the eye. One of the first artists to make randomness and chance part of the work, Arp saw chance as a collaborator in his process. This was a game-changer in the visual arts. Until then, Western artists had striven for a skilled level of control. Rather than beginning with a subject (as artists had done for years), Arp generated the form first, and titled his works after they were completed. In this way, he sought to minimize the intervention of the conscious mind.

Arp is a transitional figure. As one of the founders of Dada, and subsequently an active participant in Surrealism, his work forms a link between these two major movements of the early twentieth century.

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