Kurt Schwitters
born June 20, 1887, Hannover, Ger.died Jan. 8, 1948, Little Langdale, Westmorland, Eng.
German Dada artist and poet, best known for his collages and relief constructions.
Soon after World War I Schwitters was attracted by the emerging Dada school, a nihilistic literary and artistic movement dedicated to the destruction of existing aesthetic values. Denied membership in the Berlin circle of Dadaists, he formed his own variant in Hannover. He began to create compositions assembled from various everyday objects (train tickets, wooden spools, newspaper, string, cigarettes, and postage stamps). Similarly, his poems were composites of newspaper headlines, advertising slogans, and other printed ephemera. He referred to all of his artistic activities as Merz, a nonsense word derived from the second syllable of the word Kommerz (German: “commerce”). His collages were called Merzbilden (“Merz pictures”). Later, he also referred to all of his daily activities and even to himself by that name.
About 1920 Schwitters conceived the idea of building a cathedral of everyday objects. He built this three-dimensional assemblage, called Merzbau (“Merz building”), into his house in Hannover and continued to add to it for 16 years until there was little room left in the house for anything else. Unfortunately, it was destroyed during World War II.
In 1937, when the German government declared Schwitters' art decadent, he moved to Norway, where he began a second Merzbau (destroyed by fire in 1951). With the German invasion of Norway in 1940, however, Schwitters was forced to escape to England. There, with the aid of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, he began work on the third Merzbau but died before completing it. Merzbau III is preserved at the University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne.
It was his use of ‘found images’ that excited me and I have been using this idea through the twelve pieces that you can see here. I have used Schwitter’s style to convey a modern 21st Century approach to collage. I have been using a lot of map images and other found colourfull images to recycle them into interesting pieces of art. The construction that I have used is mainly using a craft knife to cut the pieces but I am trying to escape the straight edge and get out there with the abstraction of the shape of the image as well. (This will be displayed in later works).
I have found this to be an exciting time and I am using this smaller size to dictate the finished piece. It is also a chance to experiment with the finished piece and therefore produce a more abstract picture than I would have done using the 'mosaic'd' style of some previous works.
'Just One' - For Sale - £15
This was a piece that was all about modern text.
'Rasputin's Secret' - For Sale - £15
More about the shape of colour than an attempt to be too abstract.
'The Correct Times' - For Sale - £15
Shape and form make for a very interesting finish
'Coast' - For Sale - £15
Smaller Squares and more blues and text language.
'Geri' - For Sale - £15
Former Spice girl with 20th Century machinary
'Manufacturing' -For Sale - £15
Maps, Black & White, Colour interaction.
'Utterly Utter' - For Sale - £15
This feels like a more contained piece than the others, the darker boarder has helped and the use of a lot of autumn colours.
'Essendine' - For Sale - £15
A town in Rutland. The name of this piece is taken from the map. The use of big engines in this piece, is to rub against the country's smallest county.
'Source for Still Life' - For Sale - £15
Mosaic makes an appearance and the use of images that were infact a 'source for still life' the blackand white and browns dominate the piece to give it a sense of an oncoming storm.
'Drowning' - For Sale - £15
We are all drowning in some way. The use of grey, text and green, helps to frame the piece and give it, its sense of identity.
'Under Construction' -For Sale - £15
Is a real attempt to convey the spirit of Schwitters and to let go of the pleasureable to the scraps of words and images, mainly using Richard Hamilton's love of the white to control the piece.
'Engines' - For Sale - £15
Forward thrust on picture front, still its smaller squared pieces tell its tale of the manfacturing of modern 20th century engines.
There will be more in this series soon and they will explore more bounderies of abstraction than these.
There will be more in this series soon and they will explore more bounderies of abstraction than these.
