Riesentorso / Torse géant

The German-French poet, painter and sculptor Hans Arp initially created reliefs of biomorphic shapes. These works inspired his undulating sculptures such as ‘Riesentorso’, a patinated bronze sculpture that is larger than life-size, and which is suggestive of the human form. Despite the predominantly abstract shapes, the work appears to reference (fragments of) the human body. The distorted torso seems to be frozen in motion, caught in the process of bending over. The smooth polished skin, rounded shapes and fluid lines are recurrent elements in Arp’s work. The artist often returned to earlier works, expanding and re-envisioning previous ideas in a process that was always driven by intuition and chance; a working method reminiscent of the ‘écriture automatique’ (automatic writing) of the Surrealists.