The Swiss painter, designer, and dancer Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) was an active member of the Zurich Dada group, a participant in the "International" Constructivist movement, and an advocate of concrete art and geometric abstraction. She believed that melding the fine and applied arts could establish a visual vocabulary for the technological age and was committed to the concept of the "total work of art."

Sophie Taeuber-Arp, nee Taeuber, was born in Davos, Switzerland, on January 19, 1889. She studied at the School of Applied Arts (St. Gallen, Switzerland) from 1908 to 1910 and at the experimental studios of Wilhelm von Debschits (Munich), a workshop of the Blaue Reiter epoch, in 1911 and 1913. In 1912 Taeuber attended the School of Arts and Crafts (Hamburg) and in 1916 the famous Leban School of Dance (Zurich). From 1915 to 1932 she belonged to the Swiss Werkbund, an organization whose members believed that the applied arts could be used to create...