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Lot Essay
Executed in 1921, MZ 259 Zeichnung Campendonk is a brilliant example of Schwitters’ most iconic body of works. Incorporating scrap elements such as leaflets cut outs, receipts, and a 30-pfennig 1920 stamp, the present work fully abides to the artist’s creative process. ‘I saw no reason’, he wrote, ‘that old tickets, pieces of driftwood, checkroom numbers, pieces of wire and wheels, buttons, old rubbish from attics and scrap heaps could not be used as material for painting on an equal footing with pigments manufactured in factories’ (Merz 20. Katalog, 1927).
At the end of the 1910s, as his paintings were turning towards abstraction, Schwitters was overwhelmed by the discovery of collage. This new medium served him as an undreamed-of liberation, that freed him from painting and its inherent limits. He baptised this ‘new way of creation with any material’, which would consume him throughout his life and result in him becoming regarded as the leading exponent of the genre, as ‘Merz’ (Mz). The name originated, almost casually, from Merzbild, one of his earliest endeavours in this series, a collage in which he included an advertisement clipping bearing the word ‘MERZ’, the second syllable of Kommerz (commerce). ‘When I first exhibited these pictures with the Sturm in Berlin, I searched for a collective noun for this new kind of picture, because I could not define them with the older conceptions of Expressionism, Futurism or whatever. So I gave all my pictures the name ‘MERZ-pictures’ after the most characteristic of them and thus made them like a species. (Kurt Schwitters, quoted in W. Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, New York, 1967, p. 93).
Schwitters linked the birth of Merz with the prevailing conditions of his home country, Germany, around 1918. In search of a way to express his relief and joy for the end of the war, he turned to daily life’s debris because, quoting his exact words, ‘we were now a poor country’. Despite the politically charged moment, Schwitters’ attitude was always apolitical and entirely focused on the aesthetic value of his works. ‘Merz’, he stated, ‘stands for from freedom from all fetters, for the sake of artistic creation’. His interest was in the creation of abstract works of art, using all conceivable materials for this artistic purpose. ‘Today, Schwitters’ collages have outlived the frenzied atmosphere of the time when they were launched, and we are open to their natural aesthetic affect, which is all the artist himself had ever striven for’. (W. Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, New York, 1967, p. 92)
‘What nectar and ambrosia were to the Greek gods, glue was to Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters literally feasted on glue, and it was with glue that he produced his marvellous collages’.
Hans Arp‚ Franz Müellers Drahtfrühling‘, Quadrum, 1965.
The present work, before entering, in 1952, New York’s Sidney Janis Gallery -which showcased some of the finest and most daring avant-garde art of the 20th century- was part of the collection of Sibyl Moholy-Nagy. Born in Dresden in 1903 in a prosperous family of the German intelligentsia – her father was the head of the Dresden Academy – she frequented the foremost intellectuals of the time, among whom Theodor Adorno. In 1937, she accompanied her second husband, the Hungarian Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, in his move to the United States. A foremost architecture and art critic, in 1951 she became professor of architecture history at Pratt Institute in New York, the city in which she would spend the rest of her life.
At the end of the 1910s, as his paintings were turning towards abstraction, Schwitters was overwhelmed by the discovery of collage. This new medium served him as an undreamed-of liberation, that freed him from painting and its inherent limits. He baptised this ‘new way of creation with any material’, which would consume him throughout his life and result in him becoming regarded as the leading exponent of the genre, as ‘Merz’ (Mz). The name originated, almost casually, from Merzbild, one of his earliest endeavours in this series, a collage in which he included an advertisement clipping bearing the word ‘MERZ’, the second syllable of Kommerz (commerce). ‘When I first exhibited these pictures with the Sturm in Berlin, I searched for a collective noun for this new kind of picture, because I could not define them with the older conceptions of Expressionism, Futurism or whatever. So I gave all my pictures the name ‘MERZ-pictures’ after the most characteristic of them and thus made them like a species. (Kurt Schwitters, quoted in W. Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, New York, 1967, p. 93).
Schwitters linked the birth of Merz with the prevailing conditions of his home country, Germany, around 1918. In search of a way to express his relief and joy for the end of the war, he turned to daily life’s debris because, quoting his exact words, ‘we were now a poor country’. Despite the politically charged moment, Schwitters’ attitude was always apolitical and entirely focused on the aesthetic value of his works. ‘Merz’, he stated, ‘stands for from freedom from all fetters, for the sake of artistic creation’. His interest was in the creation of abstract works of art, using all conceivable materials for this artistic purpose. ‘Today, Schwitters’ collages have outlived the frenzied atmosphere of the time when they were launched, and we are open to their natural aesthetic affect, which is all the artist himself had ever striven for’. (W. Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, New York, 1967, p. 92)
‘What nectar and ambrosia were to the Greek gods, glue was to Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters literally feasted on glue, and it was with glue that he produced his marvellous collages’.
Hans Arp‚ Franz Müellers Drahtfrühling‘, Quadrum, 1965.
The present work, before entering, in 1952, New York’s Sidney Janis Gallery -which showcased some of the finest and most daring avant-garde art of the 20th century- was part of the collection of Sibyl Moholy-Nagy. Born in Dresden in 1903 in a prosperous family of the German intelligentsia – her father was the head of the Dresden Academy – she frequented the foremost intellectuals of the time, among whom Theodor Adorno. In 1937, she accompanied her second husband, the Hungarian Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, in his move to the United States. A foremost architecture and art critic, in 1951 she became professor of architecture history at Pratt Institute in New York, the city in which she would spend the rest of her life.