Manicured Relief

In 1917 Jean (Hans) Arp began creating wooden reliefs from curvilinear pieces of painted and layered wood. Starting with individual forms based on abstract drawings, he worked with a carpenter to cut amoeba-like shapes and then assembled them into composite structures that hold a hybrid position between painting and sculpture. The title, Manicured Relief, suggests that the top form's gray-green extremities might represent painted fingernails, which became popular among women in the mid-1920s. The feminine association also carries over to the work's first owner: Mary Reynolds, an artist and avant-garde bookbinder who, like Arp, was based in Paris in the 1930s.