Biomorphic

About Biomorphic

Biomorphic shapes are soft-edged and irregular, closer to an amoeba or a pebble than to a square. They hint at organic life without depicting any particular creature. Alfred H. Barr used the word in 1936 to separate this strand of abstraction from its geometric counterpart.

The forms flourished between the wars. Jean Arp cut and carved wobbling, curving outlines from the late 1910s, Joan Miró filled canvases with floating, cell-like figures, and Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth pierced and hollowed their sculptures as though worn by water. A generation earlier, Hector Guimard had given the Paris Métro entrances of 1900 cast-iron stems that bend like plant growth. After 1945 the language moved into furniture and product design: Arne Jacobsen's Egg chair (1958) and countless kidney-shaped tables share it. Louise Bourgeois and Ken Price later gave biomorphism a more bodily, sometimes unsettling edge.