"Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb," once commented Jean Arp–a remarkable twentieth-century sculptor, painter and poet associated with and a forefather of the Dada and Surrealist movements. The avant-garde artist was born on September 16, 1887 in Strasbourg, France, where he studied at the Ecole des Arts et Métiers. In 1905, he transferred to the Weimar Academy and then to Paris at the Académie Julian in 1908, and subsequent to graduation resumed his painting in Weggis, Switzerland in isolation. By 1912, Jean Arp had become associated with the Blaue Reiter, or Blue Rider, a group of Expressionist artists in Munich, where he exhibited "semi-figurative" drawings and became well-acquainted with fellow artist Wassily Kandinsky. In 1913, he exhibited with another group of Expressionists at the first Hebrstsalon–or Autumn Salon, an art exhibition–in Berlin. Aware of the developments within the French avant-garde through his contacts with such artists as Apollinaire, Max Jacob and Sonia and Robert Delaunay in 1914, Arp presented his first abstracts and paper cutouts in Zürich in 1915 and arranged his first shallow wooden reliefs and compositions of string nailed to canvas. In 1915, the art of Jean Arp consisted of abstract and angularly patterned tapestries and drawings, but soon matured as he became the co-founder of the revolutionary Dadaist school of artists in Zürich, Switzerland with Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball. His familiar abstract and curvilinear forms debuted in 1917, and in 1919 he continued his Dadaist portrayals with Ernst in Cologne before participating in the Berlin Dada exhibition of 1920. Jean Arp married Sophie Tauber in 1922, during a period where he was most notable for his painted wooden bas-reliefs and humorous cut-cardboard constructions. He settled with his wife at Meudon in 1927, when he participated in the Surrealist movement and had his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Surréaliste in Paris. He then parted with Surrealism to become a co-founder of Abstraction-Creation in 1931, when his characteristic organic forms became more severe and geometrical. In the 1930s, Jean Arp began to work in freestanding sculpture, carving and molding a variety of substances.