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Lot Essay
In its formal qualities, Ohne Titel (Mit braunem Kreis mit Sektorausschnit) owes a great deal to the influence of Schwitters’ friend Jean (Hans) Arp, whom he had first met at the culmination of World War I. The pair would remain friends for nearly 20 years, with Schwitters being highly impressed by Arp’s independent spirit, freedom of expression and total commitment to art. Arp’s experiments with different materials would influence Schwitters’ oeuvre, “We painted with scissors,” Arp said, “with glue and with new materials…with collage and with montage. Just finding a stone, discovering a piece of clockwork, finding a little tram ticket, turned into an adventure” (J. Arp, quoted in Schwitters Arp, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Basel, 2004).
When Arp moved to Paris in 1925, Schwitters would visit him as often as circumstances would allow. Ohne Titel (Mit braunem Kreis mit Sektorausschnit) is one of the last works that Schwitters executed in Germany, as later in 1936 he fled the country, first to travelling to Norway before finally arriving in England. While his friendship with Arp would continue into his self-imposed exile, the two would eventually lose touch, although the influence of Arp’s work on his friend would continue.
Schwitters became a major figure in European Dadaism as he sought to create what he termed “connections, preferably between everything in this world.” Collage turned out to be the perfect medium for this as he ruminated on the destruction caused by the Great War. “Everything had broken down in any case,” he said, “and new things had to be made out of the fragments.” (L. Dickerman, Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2005, p. 159).
When Arp moved to Paris in 1925, Schwitters would visit him as often as circumstances would allow. Ohne Titel (Mit braunem Kreis mit Sektorausschnit) is one of the last works that Schwitters executed in Germany, as later in 1936 he fled the country, first to travelling to Norway before finally arriving in England. While his friendship with Arp would continue into his self-imposed exile, the two would eventually lose touch, although the influence of Arp’s work on his friend would continue.
Schwitters became a major figure in European Dadaism as he sought to create what he termed “connections, preferably between everything in this world.” Collage turned out to be the perfect medium for this as he ruminated on the destruction caused by the Great War. “Everything had broken down in any case,” he said, “and new things had to be made out of the fragments.” (L. Dickerman, Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2005, p. 159).