TODAY on the GWA Podcast: esteemed art historian Briony Fer on the avant-garde icon, Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

The Professor of History of Art at University College London and a Fellow of the British Academy, Briony Fer is one of the leading art historians in the world. Writing and publishing extensively on modern and contemporary art, specialising in the history of abstraction in the 20th century, Fer has curated monumental exhibitions on artists such as Anni Albers at the Tate Modern, Louise Bourgeois at the National Museum, Oslo, Eva Hesse at the Fruitmarket, Mel Bochner at Whitechapel, and more

But the reason we are speaking with Fer today is because she has also just curated an exhibition “Sophie Taeuber-Arp: The Rule of Curves” at Hauser & Wirth Paris, and published a stunning book on the great artist, dancer, performer, puppet maker, bag weaver, teacher, stained-glass maker, sculptor, architect, and so much more, Sophie Taeuber-Arp…

Born in Switzerland in 1889, Taeuber-Arp is famously associated with the Dada movement, a group of artists who formed post-devastation of World War I to make sense of a nonsensical world. Performing dance routines set to Hugo Ball poetry and turning to her geometric abstractions, full of explosions of colour, that can look equally mechanical as they are made with a human hand – as Fer writes, "diagrammatic and decorative” – Taebuer-Arp was at the forefront of modernism, conjuring new ways of working with form and colour, and exploring – and twisting – the grid, the icon of modern art, for the modern world - and I can’t wait to find out more.

The book: https://shop.hauserwirth.com/products/sophie-taeuber-arp-la-regle-des-courbes-the-rule-of-curves

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel

Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael

Music by Ben Wetherfield