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Lot Essay
‘I can see from the work I am doing now, that in my old age I will be able to go on developing Merz. After my death it will be possible to distinguish 4 periods in my Merz works: the Sturm and Drang of the first works – in a sense revolutionary in the art world – then the dry, more scientific search for the new possibilities and the laws of the composition and materials, then the brilliant game with skills gained, that is to say, the present stage, and ultimately the utilization of acquired strengths in the intensification of expression. I will have achieved that in around ten years’ (Kurt Schwitters, ‘Letter to Helma Schwitters’, 23 December 1939, quoted in Schwitters in Britain, exh. cat., London, 2013, p. 56).
Das Korbbild (The Basket Picture) is a large multi-media ‘Merz’ relief made by Schwitters in Norway shortly before he was forced into exile (once again) in England when the Nazis invaded Norway in April 1940. Comprising of a plain wooden board, a basket containing a broad assortment of flotsam and detritus of the kind that Schwitters regularly collected on the shores of the Norwegian island of Hjertøya, where he lived, and a languidly shaped white plaster sculpture of the kind he had been making throughout the 1930s, this Merzbild is a simple and elegant fusion of formal contrasts.
As Schwitters was to write to Lucia Moholy-Nagy in London in 1940, he believed the small, three dimensional plaster sculptures he was making throughout this period to be his ‘best things’. In Das Korbbild, an elegant organic plaster form akin to such sculptures rises from the two dimensional wooden plane of the work’s ground to provide lyrical and idealized formal contrast to the collated relief of the wicker basket and its contents of more traditional, found, ‘Merz’ elements.
In this way, this ambitious Merzbild-relief is one expressive of the formal juxtaposition of organic nature and constructed idealized form that punctuates Schwitters’ work throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
Das Korbbild (The Basket Picture) is a large multi-media ‘Merz’ relief made by Schwitters in Norway shortly before he was forced into exile (once again) in England when the Nazis invaded Norway in April 1940. Comprising of a plain wooden board, a basket containing a broad assortment of flotsam and detritus of the kind that Schwitters regularly collected on the shores of the Norwegian island of Hjertøya, where he lived, and a languidly shaped white plaster sculpture of the kind he had been making throughout the 1930s, this Merzbild is a simple and elegant fusion of formal contrasts.
As Schwitters was to write to Lucia Moholy-Nagy in London in 1940, he believed the small, three dimensional plaster sculptures he was making throughout this period to be his ‘best things’. In Das Korbbild, an elegant organic plaster form akin to such sculptures rises from the two dimensional wooden plane of the work’s ground to provide lyrical and idealized formal contrast to the collated relief of the wicker basket and its contents of more traditional, found, ‘Merz’ elements.
In this way, this ambitious Merzbild-relief is one expressive of the formal juxtaposition of organic nature and constructed idealized form that punctuates Schwitters’ work throughout the 1930s and 1940s.