From 1905 to 1907, he studied at the Weimarer Kunstschule in Germany, where he met his uncle, German landscape painter Carl Arp.

Arp later told the story of how, when he was notified to report to the German consulate in Zürich,[5] he pretended to be mentally ill in order to avoid being drafted into the German Army: after crossing himself whenever he saw a portrait of Paul von Hindenburg,[4] Arp was given paperwork on which he was told to write his date of birth on the first blank line.

[8] In 1916 Hugo Ball opened the Cabaret Voltaire, which was to become the centre of Dada activities in Zürich for a group that included Arp, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, and others.

[9] In 1920, as Hans Arp, along with Max Ernst and the social activist Alfred Grünwald, he set up the Cologne Dada group.

Beginning in the 1930s the artist expanded his efforts from collage, assemblage (Trousse d'un Da, 1921[10]) and bas-relief to include bronze and stone sculptures.

Arp visited New York City in 1949 for a solo exhibition at the Buchholz Gallery, and this coincided with a general international recognition of his work.

In 1950 he was invited to execute a relief for the Harvard University Graduate Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and would also be commissioned to do a mural at the UNESCO building in Paris.

Arthur and Madeleine Lewja, of Galerie Chalette, who had known Arp in Europe, became his gallery representatives in New York in the late 1950s, and were instrumental in establishing his reputation on the American side of the Atlantic.

[20] She died in 1943 in Zürich, where they had moved to escape the German occupation of France, from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning.