Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Art Brokerage: Sophie Taeuber-Arp Swiss Artist: b. 1889-1943. Born in Davos, Switzerland, Sophie was the fifth child of Prussian pharmacist Emil Taeuber and Sophie Taeuber-Krüsi. She began her art studies in her homeland, at the School of Applied Arts in St. Gallen. Taeuber-Arp took part in numerous exhibitions during her relatively short life. For example, she was included in the first Carré exhibition at the Galeries 23 (Paris) in 1930, along with other notable early 20th-century modernists. Many museums around the world have her work in their collections, but in the public consciousness her reputation lagged for many years behind that of her more famous husband. Sophie Taeuber-Arp began to gain substantial recognition only after the Second World War, and her work is now generally accepted as in the first rank of classical modernism. An important milestone was the exhibition of her work at documenta 1 in 1955. Then, in 1981 the Museum of Modern Art (New York) mounted a retrospective of her work that subsequently traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), and the Musée d'Art Contemporain (Montreal). A museum honoring Taeuber-Arp and Jean Arp opened in 2007 in a section of the Rolandseck, Germany, train station redesigned by Richard Meier. Taeuber-Arp is the only woman on the current series of Swiss banknotes in Switzerland; her portrait has been on the 50-franc note since 1995. Listings wanted.