Hans Arp

Interpretation

These amorphous wooden shapes painted in shades of green, blue, red, off-white, and yellow alternate between total abstraction and the suggestion of objects, figures, or landscapes. Hans Arp allowed arbitrary and unexpected relationships to develop within his works-a reflection of his involvement in the French Dadaist and Surrealist movements of the 1920s and 1930s.

Acquisition details

Art collector Katherine Urquhart Warren (1897-1976) donated Configuration to the RISD Museum in 1967. It joined other works she gave the museum between 1956 and 1977 by artists such as Ilya Bolotowsky, Joan Miro, and Pablo Picasso. Warren’s collecting and philanthropic activity was made possible by her birth into a wealthy and powerful Louisiana family and her marriage into an equally prestigious New York family. She served on the RISD Museum Committee (now the Board of Governors) from 1953 to 1974 and as a term trustee for the school from 1967 to 1970. She began collecting early 20th-century European and American art in 1926. She was also notable for serving on the Museum of Modern Art’s board in New York and for her support of architectural preservation projects in Newport, Rhode Island.

-Dominic Molon, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art