Raised on a farm in Skåne, Asmund Arle was profoundly influenced by the animals on the farm. These impressions would later shape a significant part of his artistic career. After completing his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, where he studied under Eric Grate, Arle moved to France in 1949, where the family settled just outside Paris in Villier-le-Bel. He created countless drawings of the animals being transported to the nearby slaughterhouse. These drawings later served as sketches for Arle's first sculptures, initially depicting calves. Several smaller bronze sculptures of his son Staffan were also created during this period. These sculptures radiated both a vulnerable exposure and, at the same time, an inner strength, which has been a consistent theme in Arle's art ever since.

During his time in France, Arle came into close contact with works by both August Rodin and Alberto Giacometti. It is evident that Arle was greatly influenced by the solitude and the eternal striving present in Giacometti's art.

Arle had his first solo exhibition at Galleri Färg och Form in 1959 after moving back to Sweden. A couple of years later, in 1961, his wife unexpectedly passed away, leaving Arle unable to work for an extended period. That same year, he became a professor of sculpture at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. It was not until he met Lizzie Olsson, who became his second wife, that his desire and inspiration to create gradually returned.

Arle's thematic world of infants, kittens, pigs, birds, calves, and horses is not of grand, classical sculptures but rather tender portraits of life when it is most fragile and vulnerable, yet also when the life force is at its strongest and most evident.