Sophie Taeuber-Arp

The life and art of a leading artist of the twentieth century.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp is a pioneer of modern art. She was at the center of Zurich’s DADA and is considered the most important Swiss artist of the early twentieth century.

She was a modern dancer, painter, sculptor, textile artist, designer, and interior architect. She made paper, textiles, wood and glass shine – she bound light to matter in paintings, drawings, jewelry, embroidery, rugs, reliefs, sculptures, marionettes, furniture, and crystalline sketches.

This book is a unique document. It shows how Sophie remained passionately devoted to her art despite the threat of two world wars. It will open readers’ eyes to how a woman not only found and preserved her inner self and joy in extremely difficult circumstances through her works of art, but also tapped enormous strength to endure life and remain true to herself.

The author, Silvia Boadella, is Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s great-niece. She grew up with Sophie’s oeuvre and draws from her memories, stories and family documents, as well as hitherto unpublished sources for this book. She provides readers access for the first time to Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s personality and to her private and artistic environment.The author connects stages in Sophie’s life to her works and, with the aid of numerous illustrations, including photographs from the family archives, constructs a vivid experience for the reader. Silvia Boadella illustrates how Sophie Taeuber-Arp developed her art concretely from the depths of her existence and from the unmediated input from all her senses. Fundamental topics such as love, birth, and death, which are discernable in every human life, offer direct emotional access to Sophie’s works and allow the reader to be inspired by Sophie, to engage with her work creatively, and to feel first-hand how the artist lives on through her art.

Silvia Boadella, PhD, great-niece of Sophie Taeuber-Arp, is a writer and psychotherapist and directs the International Institute for Biosynthesis (Switzerland), where she teaches her own creative combination of art, therapy and dance.