French-German, 1887-1966. Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp, popular as Jean Arp was born to a French mother and a German father and educated himself in painting and sculpture at the distinguished Académie Julian in Paris, France. He traversed the diverse areas of painting, sculpture and poetry. He was a founding member of Dadaism in 1916 and an abstract artist whose work cherished irrationality and intuition and was distanced from violence, war and political affinities. During the 1920s, he was associated with the Surrealists and created his first Papiers déchirés. In 1930, he became a part of a group Circle and Square for a brief period, and his subsequent participation in the Abstraction-Creation movement absorbed the group in it. Discarded materials like fabric and paper and spontaneity were fundamental components in his compositional process influenced by biomorphic forms.