Arp: The Plasters celebrates the recent acquisition of plaster sculptures by French-German sculptor, painter and poet Jean (Hans) Arp (1886-1966), a gift from the Stiftung Arp, e.V. to Leeds Museums and Galleries and The Hepworth Wakefield. Arp began creating sculptures in the early 1930s, with plaster as his chosen medium. His plasters took on a variety of different functions: they were not only used for bronze casting, but were also exhibited, and placed in his studio as inspiration and as raw material. Later in his career he produced enlarged versions of existing sculptures by first scaling them up in plaster.

Other sculptors, including Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, picked up vital inspiration from visiting Arp’s studio in Meudon, France during the 1930s. Hepworth would later recall her ‘delight in the poetic idea in Arp’s sculptures’ following her visit to the studio. In 1937 Arp sold a plaster cast to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and also gave plasters as gifts occasionally during the 1940s and 1950s. Following his death in 1966, his second wife Marguerite Arp-Hagenbach began systematically donating plasters to international museums.

The exhibition will present Arp’s plaster sculptures alongside works by his contemporaries, including Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth and Paule Vézelay, among others, revealing the significant role plaster played in allowing the artist to develop his unique vocabulary of forms.