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Fine Arts
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Grasse represents a land of exile or a refuge for many artists
forced to flee their region or their homeland for whatever reason.
Such is the case during the Second World War for Hans Arp, Sophie
Taeuber-Arp, Alberto Magnelli and Sonia Delaunay, to name but a
few. The "Grasse Group" is formed under the incentive of Hans Arp, more as a group of friends meeting regularly to discuss their work, than as a group of creators sharing the same aesthetic principles. Whether it be drawings, watercolors, crumpled, burnt or glued paper, everyone expresses him/herself in his/her own way. It is then, with Sophie Taeuber, Sonia Delaunay, and Alberto Magnelli, that Hans Arp executes a suite of ten gouaches. The transposition of these gouaches into lithographs begins in 1943 at the Imbert Press in Grasse, with the excellent Swiss lithographer André Kalin. But the proofs are destroyed when he is arrested by the Gestapo in October 1943. Sonia Delaunay manages to save the gouaches, edited in the form of an album by Nourritures Terrestres in 1950, as a limited edition of 154 copies.
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"Who within this group of friends, all experimented practitioners of abstract art, came up with the idea of a collaborative creative game? Undoubtedly Arp, always haunted by the work of cathedral builders. One of the four inscribed the final motif, developed by the three others, in turns on the same sheet of paper. Although it's easy to detect the style of each, these artistic rebuses are surprisingly coherent and powerful in their color and their construction". Gabrielle Buffet Picabia.
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