Briony Fer and Cécile Bargues on Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s Work

Why It Matters

The exhibition repositions Sophie Taeuber‑Arp as a pivotal modernist figure, prompting a reassessment of gendered biases in art history and influencing contemporary curatorial approaches to interdisciplinary practice.

Key Takeaways

• Exhibition revives Sophie Taeuber-Arp, presenting many never‑seen works.
• Curators focus on her creative process, especially curves and tools.
• Her applied‑arts training blends geometry, ornament, and modernist design.
• Taeuber‑Arp’s work straddles Dada freedom and disciplined abstraction.
• Show challenges art‑historical canon, highlighting gendered neglect in Paris.

Summary

The new exhibition of Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber‑Arp, curated by Briony Fer and Cécile Bargues, marks the first major Parisian showcase since the 1989 retrospective, bringing together works that have rarely, if ever, been displayed publicly.

The curators deliberately avoid a conventional survey, instead probing the artist’s obsession with curves, circles, and the tools that produced them. They highlight her rigorous yet experimental process—using instruments like the Burmeister curve, graphite sketches, and industrial‑grade design tools—to create a visual language that fuses ornament, geometry, and the tactile gestures of applied arts.

Among the highlights is the enigmatic “Ada” head, a hybrid of figuration and abstraction that embodies Taeuber‑Arp’s ambivalence between body and form. The conversation also references her training at the Kunstgewerbeschule, where she mastered architecture, textile design, and woodwork, skills that later informed modernist figures such as Walter Gropius.

By foregrounding these overlooked pieces and emphasizing her interdisciplinary methodology, the show challenges the entrenched art‑historical narrative that has long marginalized women artists in Paris. It invites institutions to reconsider how decorative practices intersect with modernism and to recognize Taeuber‑Arp’s lasting influence on design and Dadaist thought.

Original Description

Briony Fer and Cécile Bargues were in conversation on the occasion of Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s Paris exhibition ‘La règle des courbes / The Rule of Curves.’

Briony Fer is an art historian who has written extensively on modern and contemporary art. Her research interests have consistently moved between the early 20th century avant-gardes and the work of contemporary artists. Starting with her doctoral research on constructivism, she has had a life-long preoccupation with the history of abstraction, leading to the publication of several influential books including ‘On Abstract Art’ (1997), ‘The Infinite Line’ (2004) and Eva Hesse: ‘Studiowork’ (2009). She has also curated major retrospectives including ‘Anni Albers’ (co-curated with Ann Coxon and Maria Müller-Schareck aat Tate Modern and K20 Dusseldorf, 2018) and ‘Louise Bourgeois: Imaginary Conversations’ (with Andrea Kroksnes, at the Nationalmuseum in Oslo, 2023). Sophie Taeuber-Arp has been an important point of reference in her thinking and teaching over many years and she contributed an essay to the catalogue of the major retrospective ‘Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction’ (curated by Anne Umland and Walburga Krupp, 2021-2). She is Professor of History of Art at University College London and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Cécile Bargues is a historian of twentieth-century art whose work centres on the relationship between art and politics, including the evolution and legacy of Dadaism from the 1920s to the present day. She is the author of several books, notably a monograph devoted to Sophie Taeuber-Arp (‘Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Les dernières années’, Fage/Fondation Giacometti, 2022, reprinted in 2026) and has contributed essays to exhibition catalogues published by the Centre Pompidou, the Musée Picasso-Paris, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Tate Modern, London, and MoMA, New York, among others. As a curator, she has organised or co-organised exhibitions at Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg; Le Jeu de Paume, Paris; Centre Pompidou-Metz; Musée d’Arts de Nantes; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole; and Centre Pompidou, editing or co-editing the accompanying catalogues. Cécile Bargues is a lecturer in contemporary art history at the Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier.

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Hauser & Wirth is an international contemporary and modern art gallery with spaces in Zurich, London, Somerset, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, St. Moritz, Monaco, Menorca, Paris and Basel.

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