“Sculpture should walk on the tips of its toes, unostentatious, unpretentious, and light as the spoor of an animal in snow. Art should melt into and even merge with nature itself.”— Jean Arp

Horrified by the destructive forces he witnessed in World War I, Hans (Jean) Arp turned to nature for inspiration. His work is sensuous, with biomorphic figures resembling corporeal forms that are abstracted from any particular visual reference – often referred to as organic abstraction. This sculpture, La Sainte de la Lisière, or Saint of the Forest Edge, evokes the sublime spirituality with which Arp approached his work.

Arp was born in Straßburg in Alsace-Lorraine in 1886; he studied art and poetry in France and Germany throughout the early years of the 20^th century before settling in Switzerland in 1915. He was a significant figure in the Dada art movement, a major avant-garde European art movement that lasted through the 1920s.