Jean Hans Arp (French 1886- 1966) Woodblock. Numbered #130/250. Pencil signed lower right. Total measurements with frame - 14 1/2" wide x 11 3/4" high. Jean Arp is one of the gentle revolutionaries of modern art. Important to the dada and surrealist movements and a significant poet as well as artist, he helped shape the modernist faith. He attacked the barbarism of the 20th century, mocked the vanity of reason and sought an art of spirital regeneration. A pioneer of abstract art, he developed one of its principal visual vocabularies: biomorphe shapes that invoke nature. Yet Arp remained free of the angry swagger, the desire to pack the big punch, that characterized many of his contemporaries. His art is light as air, and his contempt is softened by humor. He was a twinkling sort of man. Today nothing is rarer than the light touch.