A painted wooden sculpture
Tête Dada, or Dada Head, is a polychrome wooden sculpture made by Sophie Taeuber-Arp in 1920. It belongs to her work associated with Zurich Dada and geometric abstraction. It entered the Centre Pompidou’s collection in 2003.
Craft and Dada
Taeuber-Arp trained in textile design and applied arts and participated in Zurich’s Dada circle as a dancer, designer and visual artist. The head offers a specific object through which to examine those overlapping areas of practice, rather than separating sculpture from her craft background.
Looking closely
Look at the relationship between the wooden volume and the painted arrangement across it. Does a painted boundary follow the form or establish a different division? Compare views of the object before deciding what counts as its front. Such questions keep its abstraction grounded in an encounter with a three-dimensional work, while photographs of Taeuber-Arp with the sculpture offer a separate context for its presentation.