.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Prof. Dr. Werner Schmalenbach has confirmed the authenticity of this collage.
On 27 June 1918, Kurt Schwitters became an official member of the Der Sturm group. Originally founded in 1910 by Herwarth Walden, Der Sturm was conceived as an arts magazine on whose pages appeared some of the most avant-garde artists in European circles. By 1912, however, the editorial offices of Der Sturm had become a full-fledged gallery representing the new face of modern art. Der Sturm went on to become a cultural empire, including a publishing house, a school, a theater, recitation evenings and an entire network of contacts. By 1920, Sturm artists were exhibiting in New York under the auspices of the Socit Anonyme. Der Sturm became the model for Schwitters' own one-man art movement called Merz. As John Elderfield has discussed:
For Schwitters, Merz meant assemblage, that is to say, a principle or method of working rather than a specific genre or medium of art. Although Merz derived originally from a painting context, once it had been formally established in July 1919 it was quickly expanded in a whole variety of directions, some remote from painting but all in their different ways using distinct and individual material units--be they objects, words or graphic forms--in an additive or constructive way. In swift succession there appeared Merz sculptures, Merz drawings, Merz poems and prose, Merz performances and Merz theater, and on a grander scale, the environmental Merzbau which gradually obliterated the interior of Schwitters' house . . . When he announced his expansion of Merz in October 1919, he explained that his ambition was to create a Gesamkunstwerk, or total work of art . . . "Now I call myself MERZ", he proclaimed after a decade of working towards this end (J. Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, New York, 1985, p. 94).
Executed in 1921, Mz 325 anticipates the kind of rigorous geometry which characterizes Schwitters' art after 1922. The forms are cleanly cut, producing an image where strong diagonals and clear verticals marry eachother harmoniously. The different textures incorporated bring a variety of weights and forces to the surface plane. Perfectly balanced throughout, the fragments of textiles and paper constitute, through their careful combination, a new aesthetic order of pure abstraction where materials fundtion not as representations fo external reality but as representative tokens. Thus, free from all objective reality, it is the adjustment of the materials themselves that gives the work its form. Here, forms and materials are one.
Schwitters further stressed his commitment to abstraction by stating that, "the picture is a self-contained work of art. It refers to nothing outside of itself. Nor can a consistent work of art refer to anything outside itself without loosening its ties to art . . . A consistent work of art must be abstract" (quoted in ibid., p. 88).
Schwitters dedicted Mz 325 to Lszl Moholy-Nagy, a fellow Constructivist artist with whom Schwitters shared a studio in Berlin in 1921.
On 27 June 1918, Kurt Schwitters became an official member of the Der Sturm group. Originally founded in 1910 by Herwarth Walden, Der Sturm was conceived as an arts magazine on whose pages appeared some of the most avant-garde artists in European circles. By 1912, however, the editorial offices of Der Sturm had become a full-fledged gallery representing the new face of modern art. Der Sturm went on to become a cultural empire, including a publishing house, a school, a theater, recitation evenings and an entire network of contacts. By 1920, Sturm artists were exhibiting in New York under the auspices of the Socit Anonyme. Der Sturm became the model for Schwitters' own one-man art movement called Merz. As John Elderfield has discussed:
For Schwitters, Merz meant assemblage, that is to say, a principle or method of working rather than a specific genre or medium of art. Although Merz derived originally from a painting context, once it had been formally established in July 1919 it was quickly expanded in a whole variety of directions, some remote from painting but all in their different ways using distinct and individual material units--be they objects, words or graphic forms--in an additive or constructive way. In swift succession there appeared Merz sculptures, Merz drawings, Merz poems and prose, Merz performances and Merz theater, and on a grander scale, the environmental Merzbau which gradually obliterated the interior of Schwitters' house . . . When he announced his expansion of Merz in October 1919, he explained that his ambition was to create a Gesamkunstwerk, or total work of art . . . "Now I call myself MERZ", he proclaimed after a decade of working towards this end (J. Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, New York, 1985, p. 94).
Executed in 1921, Mz 325 anticipates the kind of rigorous geometry which characterizes Schwitters' art after 1922. The forms are cleanly cut, producing an image where strong diagonals and clear verticals marry eachother harmoniously. The different textures incorporated bring a variety of weights and forces to the surface plane. Perfectly balanced throughout, the fragments of textiles and paper constitute, through their careful combination, a new aesthetic order of pure abstraction where materials fundtion not as representations fo external reality but as representative tokens. Thus, free from all objective reality, it is the adjustment of the materials themselves that gives the work its form. Here, forms and materials are one.
Schwitters further stressed his commitment to abstraction by stating that, "the picture is a self-contained work of art. It refers to nothing outside of itself. Nor can a consistent work of art refer to anything outside itself without loosening its ties to art . . . A consistent work of art must be abstract" (quoted in ibid., p. 88).
Schwitters dedicted Mz 325 to Lszl Moholy-Nagy, a fellow Constructivist artist with whom Schwitters shared a studio in Berlin in 1921.