Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp worked as a painter, sculptor, and designer. She was, together with her husband Jean Arp, one of the early members of the Dada movement, founded in Zurich in 1916. In her work—comprised of paintings, graphics, textiles, clothing, sculptures, theatre, and dance—she experimented with geometric forms and color; her formalist approach was close to Cubism and De Stijl, but she applied it to a variety of media, transgressing the borders between applied and fine arts. Turned Wood Sculpture with its rounded volumes and cut-away wedge shapes testifies to Taeuber-Arp’s interest in form and balance and exemplifies her evocative use of unpainted wood in the late 1930s. However, the sculpture retains a humoristic element, through an allusion to the forest gnome Kaspar, a popular figure in German children’s literature. Taeuber-Arp’s artistic vision, based on formal research and playful allusion to childhood, is formidably expressed in this work. Jean Arp gave Turned Wood Sculpture to the Gallery in memory of his late wife in 1950, having been utterly impressed by the Société Anonyme collection when he viewed it at Yale with Katherine Dreier the year before.