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Lot Essay
Sold with a certificate of authenticity from Professor Dr Werner Schmalenbach, dated Dsseldorf, le 5 mai 1971.
Conditioned largely by the artist's emersion in nature during his years of exile from his native Germany, Schwitters' late work reveals an increasing preoccupation with organic forms. Exiled first to Norway, and later to England at the end of the war in 1945, Schwitters decided to spend the remaining years of his life in the quiet lakeside town of Ambleside amid the spectacular natural scenery of the Lake District.
Reflecting his new environment in the midst of the countryside, Schwitters' late 'Merzbilder' incorporate an increasing number of natural forms into the natural logic of their design. In the present work of 1947, a white organic shape somewhat reminiscent of a sculpture by Arp is placed at the centre of the composition and initiates a swirl of forms around it. Originating from this central point, a spiral of flotsam has been carefully placed to create a complex and elegant compositional unity that in its illusion of spacial depth represents a significant departure from the Cubist and Constructivist treatment of space that characterized so much of Schwitter's earlier compositions.
In its use of an organic form and its treatment of space, Merzbild refers closely to Schwitters' last major project, the Merzbarn. On hearing that his house in Hanover and its "phantasmagoric" interior- the Merzbau that Schwitters had built continuously since 1923 - had been destroyed in the war, Schwitters began a new Merz grotto in a nearby barn that lay deep in the countryside. His last "magnum opus", the Merzbarn was unlike its Hanoverian predecessor in its concentration of fluid shapes and its emphasis on the power of organic growth. Unfinished at the time of his death, Schwitters' Merzbarn with its spiralling abstract forms seemingly growing from the wall expressed the same concern with the forces of natural growth that he has begun to suggest here in this striking composition.
Conditioned largely by the artist's emersion in nature during his years of exile from his native Germany, Schwitters' late work reveals an increasing preoccupation with organic forms. Exiled first to Norway, and later to England at the end of the war in 1945, Schwitters decided to spend the remaining years of his life in the quiet lakeside town of Ambleside amid the spectacular natural scenery of the Lake District.
Reflecting his new environment in the midst of the countryside, Schwitters' late 'Merzbilder' incorporate an increasing number of natural forms into the natural logic of their design. In the present work of 1947, a white organic shape somewhat reminiscent of a sculpture by Arp is placed at the centre of the composition and initiates a swirl of forms around it. Originating from this central point, a spiral of flotsam has been carefully placed to create a complex and elegant compositional unity that in its illusion of spacial depth represents a significant departure from the Cubist and Constructivist treatment of space that characterized so much of Schwitter's earlier compositions.
In its use of an organic form and its treatment of space, Merzbild refers closely to Schwitters' last major project, the Merzbarn. On hearing that his house in Hanover and its "phantasmagoric" interior- the Merzbau that Schwitters had built continuously since 1923 - had been destroyed in the war, Schwitters began a new Merz grotto in a nearby barn that lay deep in the countryside. His last "magnum opus", the Merzbarn was unlike its Hanoverian predecessor in its concentration of fluid shapes and its emphasis on the power of organic growth. Unfinished at the time of his death, Schwitters' Merzbarn with its spiralling abstract forms seemingly growing from the wall expressed the same concern with the forces of natural growth that he has begun to suggest here in this striking composition.