Hans Arp’s work is characterized by its great variety. Throughout the course of his life, Arp was not only a painter and sculptor, but also a poet. At the beginning of his career, he published poems and texts in the Alsatian dialect, and later in German and French. He was also deeply involved with many of the avant-garde movements of his epoch. For example, he was a co-founder of the Dada movement in Zurich and was active in surrealist circles in Paris in the 1920s. In 1928, together with Theo van Doesburg and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, he undertook the renovation of the former military building Aubette in Strasburg into a modern leisure complex. During the 1930s, Arp was a member of the French artists’ groups Cercle et Carré and Abstraction Création, which promoted concrete art. Today Arp is regarded as one of the primary practitioners of organic abstraction, which is concerned with natural growth and change. Metamorphosis is a primary theme in his art, and the motifs of the navel and torso appear in it frequently. At the beginning of his career, Arp produced reliefs, collages and drawings, but in the 1930s he turned to sculpture in the round. He achieved his artistic breakthrough in sculpture in the 1950s, and received a variety of commissions and prizes during that period.The Stiftung Arp e.V.’s comprehensive collection includes works from all genres and periods.