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Lot Essay
doremifasolasido belongs to the period at the end of the 1920s in which a final upsurge in the constructivist nature of Schwitters' art was combined with an attempt to reintegrate the rhythms and forms of nature into his work. 'Modern art following a completely intuitive and independent course, has reached the same results as modern science.' Schwitters had written in collaboration with El Lissiztky in their short-lived but important magazine Nasci. 'Like science, it has reduced form to its basic elements in order to reconstruct it according to the universal laws of nature; and in doing this, both have arrived at the same formula: EVERY FORM IS THE FROZEN INSTANTANEOUS PICTURE OF A PROCESS. THUS A WORK OF ART IS A STOPPING PLACE IN THE ROAD OF BECOMING AND NOT THE FIXED GOAL.' (in Nasci, 1924 reprinted in J. Elderfield Kurt Schwitters, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1985, p. 137)
By 1930 Schwitters' constructivist development of the 'Merzbild' - a picture assembled from the detritus of everyday life into a new, cohesive and aesthetically pleasing order - had reached a turning point. In the mid 1920s along with a wide range of former Dadaists and constructivist artists such as El Lissitzky with whom he collaborated on a number of projects at this time, Schwitters had been drawn to the ideal of integrating the constructive principle that their art revealed, into life. Part of a wider search for a gesamtkunstwerk or total-work-of-art, it was towards this end that Schwitters had persisted in the laborious and time-consuming construction of his Merzbau or Merz-House in his home in Hannover throughout the 1920s. By the end of the 1920s however, Schwitters had become aware of the limitations that reducing his art of assemblage to the mere geometry of the Constructivist style produced and was seeking to allow each 'element' of his art to function more naturally and autonomously as a unit of meaning in a more 'universal' way.
As its title suggests, doremifasolasido is a work that relates directly to this sense of unique individual elements combining into a cohesive and also lyrical progression of form while still retaining their individual autonomy and identity. Assembled from an assortment of cut-out newsprint, bus-tickets, cinema ticket stubs, film labels and other paper detritus, doremifasolasido retains a strong sense of geometry while also establishing a spiral-like rhythm of form that holds each of its seemingly disparate component parts into a surprisingly cohesive and united composition. The constituent parts - real elements taken from daily life - have been assembled according to a wholly abstract sensibility that establishes a spatial play of form and colour and holds the composition together in an elegant, if also febrile unity. The success of the composition in turn conveys a sense of the possibility of an underlying rhythm or order to apparent chaos of daily life and it is this that bestows the work with a powerful and mysterious sense of depth and resonance.
By 1930 Schwitters' constructivist development of the 'Merzbild' - a picture assembled from the detritus of everyday life into a new, cohesive and aesthetically pleasing order - had reached a turning point. In the mid 1920s along with a wide range of former Dadaists and constructivist artists such as El Lissitzky with whom he collaborated on a number of projects at this time, Schwitters had been drawn to the ideal of integrating the constructive principle that their art revealed, into life. Part of a wider search for a gesamtkunstwerk or total-work-of-art, it was towards this end that Schwitters had persisted in the laborious and time-consuming construction of his Merzbau or Merz-House in his home in Hannover throughout the 1920s. By the end of the 1920s however, Schwitters had become aware of the limitations that reducing his art of assemblage to the mere geometry of the Constructivist style produced and was seeking to allow each 'element' of his art to function more naturally and autonomously as a unit of meaning in a more 'universal' way.
As its title suggests, doremifasolasido is a work that relates directly to this sense of unique individual elements combining into a cohesive and also lyrical progression of form while still retaining their individual autonomy and identity. Assembled from an assortment of cut-out newsprint, bus-tickets, cinema ticket stubs, film labels and other paper detritus, doremifasolasido retains a strong sense of geometry while also establishing a spiral-like rhythm of form that holds each of its seemingly disparate component parts into a surprisingly cohesive and united composition. The constituent parts - real elements taken from daily life - have been assembled according to a wholly abstract sensibility that establishes a spatial play of form and colour and holds the composition together in an elegant, if also febrile unity. The success of the composition in turn conveys a sense of the possibility of an underlying rhythm or order to apparent chaos of daily life and it is this that bestows the work with a powerful and mysterious sense of depth and resonance.