Sophie Taeuber-Arp

     
     Sparkling blossoms of clouds rose from the depths.  Sparkling
blossoms of clouds came down from the heights.  Cradles of blossoms
were rocking.  Immortal stars were singing hymns to man.  All ablaze,
gaudy flower beds were emanating from gaudy flower beds.
     She loved the sea and the sky.  She loved harmony, that globular
being who Empedocles says feels comfortable in the solitude reigning
all around.  Sophie had within herself a limpid sky filled with purified
forms.  Everything received amid this sky was recast and transmuted
into purity.  A fire reigned in her, both severe and gentle.  Although
surrounded by the humming and the radiance of the wold, she was
precise and willful in her work.  She would never muddle a composition
with contradictory or ambiguous elements.  She never used literary
devices in her painting.  She simplified her compositons to the utmost;
and in the purity of her superspatial, supertemporal paintings, her
dreams wove spiritual objects for the inner eye.  Like medieval limners,
she painted angelic script with a calm and silent modesty.  This angelic
script is in communication with the hand that we feel in every object,
big or small.  The tiniest particle is protected and sheltered by that
hand.  The hand is at work everywhere.  It watches over form and the
evolution of form, it watches over stones, plants, beasts, over man and
all the invisible forces.  It has at its command the light and the dark-
ness in our lives.  Sophie readily followed the hand's guidance.  The
hand guided her brush, and thus even her smallest paintings grew
large and bright.  They attest to and sing the praises of the infinite
without neglecting the silent and flowery deepness of the earth, where
the bees drone and one bell of flowers is joined with the next, beneath
the endless and flaming bouquet of celestial blossoms and suns.
     She was never shallow or indecisive.  At gatherings of fellow artists
who sometimes thrived on ridiculing others behind their backs, she
would answer gossip mongers and backbiters calmly but with inflexible
rigor.  In regard to a visitor who spoke lightly about a friend of his,
she said that she was as interested in his life as a mole in a shooting
star.  And in her everyday life, too, she was precise and willful.
     One limpid world after another blossomed from her paintings.
Lines, squares, rectangles, circles joined one another, united, assembled
in floating wreaths.  Circles organized according to primary laws.
Waves of lines, flames of lines trace out spaces in which colors glow
in intense and tender joy.  Green poles emerge from transparent contours,
bright skies.  In her paintings she pitched tents of stars filled with
the singing of utterly serene calmness.  Her works always conjure up
pure wellsprings.  Eyes differ from one person to the next: some eyes
see only a circle while others discover the destiny determining the
flow between men and things.  "Do you see nothing there?" Hamlet says
to the Queen.  "Nothing at all, yet all that is I see." / "Nor did
you nothing hear? / "No, nothing but ourselves."  Do you see the bright
and fragrant column of daylight surging up from a circle and rounded
by clear spirits anxious to do their holy work?  Do you see the face
of night watching you through a dark circle and laden with dreams and
sparkling jewels?  And do you hear the echoes of the shepherd's pipes?
She would paint an olive branch that caressed its fruits with 
blossoming cheeks.  She would paint the dawn carilloning like a
pure bell and summoning the lonesome, the hermits, the rejoicing
spirits to sleep in their blue and green cells.  She would paint
the womb of calm, the living throne, the throne of happy and
throbbing life.  She would paint the deep-spreading sea, more
and more silent, more and more fragrant, and watching you with
the eye of a submerged godhead.  She would paint the hearts that
escape from prison and sing like sirens.  She would paint the
wishing well on which a star sits telling stories.  Toads are
croaking.  Do you hear them?  A white raven bows deeply.  Do you
see nothing there?

BACK TO 1948

BACK TO ARP MAIN PAGE