Jean Arp

Gallery d'Art Moderne, Basel

Sidney Janis Gallery, New York (acquired in 1967)

Acquired from the above by 1978 by the present owner

St. Gallen, Galerie im Erker am Gallusplatz, Hans Arp, 1966-67, no. 9, p. 13, illustrated; p. 73 (dated 1964)

New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Jean Arp, 1968, no. 9 (dated 1964)

New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, 20th Century European Art, 1970, no. 12, illustrated (in installation photograph) (dated 1964)

New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, An Arp Garden of Marbles and Bronzes, 1971, no. 3, illustrated (in installation photograph)

New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Surrealism: Two Private Eyes, 1999, vol. I, no. 255, p. 337, illustrated in color

Herbert Read, The Art of Jean Arp, New York, 1968, fig. 199, p. 181, illustrated; p. 211 (dated 1964)

Eduard Trier, Marguerite Arp-Hagenbach and François Arp, Jean Arp: Sculpture, His Last Ten Years, Stuttgart, 1968, no. 293a, p. 121, illustrated

The Museum of Modern Art, ed., Three Generations of Twentieth-Century Art: The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Greenwich, 1972, p. 62 (dated 1964)

Ionel Jianou, Jean Arp, Paris, 1973, no. 293a, p. 81 

Jacques Baron, Anthologie plastique du surréalisme, Paris, 1980, p. 16, illustrated in color (dated 1952)

Exh. Cat., Madrid, Museo Español de Arte Contemporaneo, Jean Arp 1886-1966. Esculturas. Relieves, Omba sobre papel. Tapices, 1985, no. 45, p. 126, illustration of the bronze

Exh. Cat., Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein; Musée d’Art Moderne de Strasbourg and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (and traveling), Arp, 1886-1966, 1987, no. 256, p. 237, illustration in color of the bronze; p. 310

Serge Fauchereau, Arp, New York, 1988, p. 28 

Exh. Cat., Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Hans Arp, 1994-95, no. 85, p. 168, illustration in color of the bronze; p. 181

Exh. Cat., Barcelona, Fundació Joan Miró, Jean Arp. Invenció de formes, 2001-02, p. 238, illustration of the bronze; pp. 239 and 276

Exh. Cat., Biarritz, Le Bellevue and Zaragoza, La Lonja - Palacio de Montemuzo, Los Juegos en el Arte del Siglo XX, 2002, p. 82, illustration in color of the bronze; p. 109 

Exh. Cat., Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Jean Arp. L’invention de la forme, 2004, p. 157, illustration of the bronze; p. 180

Exh. Cat., Venice, Museo Correr, Jean Arp & Sophie Taeuber Arp. Dada e oltre, 2006, p. 183, illustration in color of the bronze; p. 194

Exh. Cat., Appenzell, Kunsthalle Ziegelhütte and Locarno, Casorella, Jean Arp–Poupées, 2008, p. 57, illustration in color of the bronze 

Claude Weil-Seigeot, Atelier Jean Arp et Sophie Taeuber, Paris, 2012, p. 24, illustration in color of the bronze (in photograph of Fondation Arp’s sculpture garden)

Kai Fischer and Arie Hertog, eds., Hans Arp: Sculptures—A Critical Survey, Ostfildern, 2012, no. 293a, p. 190, illustration of the bronze

Conceived in 1963, Poupée borgne represents a culmination of the artist’s lifelong investigation into the abstraction of the human figure. Carved in granite circa 1966, the sculpture exudes a measured serenity, its quasi-symmetrical presence evoking both the corporeal and the transcendental. The figure’s gaze, referenced in its title—borgne or “one-eyed”—serves as a focal point, suggesting a perceptual bridge between the material world and a contemplative, almost spiritual dimension.

The present work exemplifies Arp’s mature engagement with the “doll” motif, a recurring subject in Dada and Surrealist discourse. Decades earlier, contemporaries such as Hans Bellmer invoked the doll figure to probe themes of desire and destruction, and Sophie Taeubeur employed marionettes and her Dada Heads for their playful and kinetic qualities, whereas Arp arrived at the motif much later as a refinement of the human form and conduit to the divine.

In the 1960s, Arp reimagined the doll form as a vessel for stillness and spiritual reflection, an analogue to the human, distilled to its most essential and sacred form. With his Poupée sculptures, Arp diverged from the themes of his Concretions begun in the 1930s. The supple, rounded volumes of the earlier figures were born from nature, their biomorphic shapes simultaneously evoking human, vegetal and geological forms. By contrast, works like Poupée borgne and Poupée-basset reflect a shift from this outward agglomeration toward an inward contemplation. While the Concretions expressed the generative power of natural forces, the doll figures of Arp’s later years are stoic, often symmetrical and even ascetic. They do not strain, struggle or emerge—they simply exist, embodying a meditative poise. Its simplicity, monumentality and repose signal a preoccupation with inner essence, spiritual serenity and the universal qualities of the human figure—concerns that increasingly occupied Arp as he sought solace in his Catholic faith near the end of his life.

As Stefanie Poley writes, “In his later years, Arp created two types of human figures for himself, with which he portrayed the different approaches to his desired goal of “the radiant.” Both are apparently asexual and do nothing but stand and stare; in fact, they seem to be staring into a transcendental realm. The eye is the perceiving organ that connects the body with the transcendental distance. One type resembles the cephalopods, a rather wobbly figure, very human, pitiable, filled with yearning, romantic, struggling…For the other type, Arp referred back to a form he himself did not invent (it was already being used around 1920 by, for example, Oskar Schlemmer, Max Ernst, and Sophie Taeuber). But now it became a symbol of a figure, and a condition, that even has features of the sacred; the memberless, symmetrical “doll” form” (Exh. Cat.Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein (and traveling), Jean Arp, 1986-87, p. 229).

Poley continues, stating that for Arp, “symmetry expressed tranquility…a motionless symmetrical stance expressed the possession and essence of tranquility. When Arp allowed the “doll” figures to be traversed by fields of color or free lines, or put them in a broad, abstract setting, the goal of mystical unity seems near. The ‘doll’ is a special form of the ‘modern manichino,’ [defined by André Breton as] the ‘symbol that is capable of touching human sensitivity’” (ibid).

The present work is the only unique stone version of Poupée borgne of this scale. A bronze edition of three plus one artist’s proof was cast in the late 1960s-early 1970s, while a cement cast was created in 1970. Acquired by one of the foremost Modernist galleries, Sidney Janis, in 1967, the present work has since remained in the same private collection for roughly fifty years.