This collage by Jean Arp belongs to an H.C. edition (out of commerce) of ten copies linked to the Album of silkscreens titled UNESCO, created in 1959 and published by the Denise René gallery with a print run of 135 copies and a cover by Victor Vasarely. The Album contains twelve prints created from earlier works by the artist, as part of a process of reviewing his previous work through the most elementary means: line, area, form, and color.
The title of the Album refers to a specific commission. In 1957, the UNESCO Committee of Architecture and Works of Art selected eleven artists for the decoration of its permanent headquarters in Paris—among them Picasso, Miró, Calder, and Moore—. Arp presented in 1958 UNESCO Constellation, a work consisting of four large-format bronze elements installed on the wall. This 1959 Album is, in part, a graphic echo of that project.
The piece held by the museum shows a black form cut out on froissé paper (a crumpled support that adds texture to the background) with an interior void that articulates the relationship between figure and emptiness. The silhouette, with curved and slightly asymmetrical contours, is characteristic of the biomorphic language that Arp developed throughout his entire career: forms that evoke the organic without representing anything concrete.
The work was acquired by Sempere at the Galería Italia in Alicante between 1976 and 1977. Both artists met during the years when Sempere lived in Paris, and Arp came to acquire a Luminous Relief by Sempere from 1955 that is preserved in the Fondation Arp in Clamart.
