The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (23 page)

Armory Show
.

An art exhibition (officially entitled the International Exhibition of Modern Art) held in New York, 17 February-15 March 1913, at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory. The initiative came from a group of artists, several of them from the circle of Robert
Henri
, who in 1911 formed the Association of American Painters and Sculptors to organize the show. The breadth of conception with which the project was envisaged and conceived was largely due to the president, Arthur B.
Davies
. It was both a mammoth exhibition in sheer quantity (estimated at 1,600 works) and a daring presentation of new and still controversial art. The American portion gave a cross-section of contemporary US art heavily weighted in favour of the younger and more radical groups. The foreign section traced the evolution of modern art, showing works by
Goya
,
Delacroix
,
Courbet
, and the
Impressionists
and
Post-Impressionists
, as well as leading contemporary artists such as
Duchamp
and
Kandinsky
. From New York the show went to Chicago (Art Institute) and Boston (Copley Hall). It was estimated that over a quarter of a million visitors paid to see it, and its impact was enormous. There was a good deal of ridicule and indignation (directed particularly at Duchamp's
Nude Descending a Staircase
), but there were also many positive reviews. It created a climate more favourable to experimentation and had a profound effect on many young American artists. Several important patrons and collectors made their first tentative purchases of modern art at the show. It has therefore become a commonplace to speak of the Armory Show as the real beginning of an interest in progressive art in the USA.

 
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Armstrong , Elizabeth
.

See
NEWLYN SCHOOL
.

 
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Arnold , Ann
and
Graham
.

See
BLAKE , PETER
.

 
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(d. probably 1302, certainly before 1310).
Italian sculptor and architect. He is first mentioned in 1265 as Nicola
Pisano's
assistant on the pulpit for Siena Cathedral. In 1277 he went to Rome, where he was in the service of Charles of Anjou: his portrait of Charles (Capitoline Mus., Rome) is one of the earliest portraitstatues since the ancient world. His most important surviving work, however, is the tomb of Cardinal de Braye (d. 1282), in S. Domenico at Orvieto, which set the type of wall tomb for more than a century. The most famous piece of sculpture attributed to him is the bronze statue of St Peter in St Peter's, Rome. As an architect, Arnolfo had a great reputation in his day and began the building of Florence Cathedral. No other buildings are documented as being by him, but several other important Florentine buildings, including Sta Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio, have been attributed to him, notably by
Vasari
. If they really are to be credited to Arnolfo, he must rank as one of the greatest architects of the Middle Ages, as well as a distinguished sculptor.

 
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(1887–1966).
French sculptor, painter, and poet who was involved with several of the most important movements in European art in the first half of the 20th cent. He was born in Strasburg, then under German rule, and spoke French and German with equal ease (he wrote poetry in both languages). Before the First World War he came into contact with the
Blaue Reiter
group in Munich and participated in their second exhibition (1912), where he met Robert
Delaunay
. During the war he met Max
Ernst
in Cologne, and was a member of a circle in Paris which included
Modigliani
,
Apollinaire
, and
Picasso
. In 1915 in Zurich he met Sophie
Taeuber
(whom he married in 1922) and collaborated with her in experiments with cut-paper compositions and
collages
. He helped to found the
Dada
movement and made illustrations for Dada publications 1916–19, during which years he also made his first abstract polychrome
relief
carvings in wood (
Dada Relief
, Kunsthaus, Basle, 1916). In 1919–20 he worked with Max Ernst at Cologne and met
Schwitters
in Berlin. During the 1920s he settled at Meudon near Paris and was associated with the
Surrealist
movement, participating in the first Surrealist exhibition in 1925. He joined
Cercle et Carré
in 1930 and was a founder member of
Abstraction-Création
in 1931. In the 1930s he turned to sculpture, and produced what are now his most familiar and distinctive works—sensuous abstract pieces that convey a suggestion of organic forms and growth without reproducing actual plant or animal shapes (
Hybrid Fruit called Pagoda
, Tate, London, 1934). During the 1940s Arp lived first at Grasse with Sophie Taeuber , Sonia
Delaunay
, and Alberto Magnelli , then in Switzerland. He returned to Meudon in 1946. In his final years he won honours and prestigious public commissions, including a relief for the Unesco building in Paris (1958), but he did not seriously add to his earlier achievements.

 
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