Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948)

Aliases: Kurt Herman Edward Karl Julius Schwitters
Professions: Painter; Modelleur; Collage Artist; Sculptor

About Kurt Schwitters

Schwitters' Biography
Examples of Schwitters' Work - 282
Literature on Schwitters - 10
Artfact 1,000™: Other Important Artists
Related Artists: Dada
Related Artists: Assemblage
Web Sources - 34

Marketplace for Kurt Schwitters

Auction Price Records - 282
Auction Houses - 30
Alert Me about Schwitters

Biography

(b Hannover, 20 June 1887; d Kendal, Westmorland, England, 8 Jan 1948). German painter, sculptor, designer and writer. He studied at the Kunstakademie in Dresden (1909–14) and served as a clerical officer and mechanical draughtsman during World War I. At first his painting was naturalistic and then Impressionistic, until he came into contact with Expressionist art, particularly the art associated with Der Sturm , in 1918. He painted mystical and apocalyptic landscapes, such as Mountain Graveyard (1912; New York, Guggenheim), and also wrote Expressionist poetry for Der Sturm magazine. He became associated with the DADA movement in Berlin after meeting Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch and Richard Huelsenbeck, and he began to make collages that he called Merzbilder . These were made from waste materials picked up in the streets and parks of Hannover, and in them he saw the creation of a fragile new beauty out of the ruins of German culture. Similarly he began to compose his poetry from snatches of overheard conversations and randomly derived phrases from newspapers and magazines. His mock-romantic poem An Anna Blume , published in Der Sturm in August 1919, was a popular success in Germany. From this time ‘Merz’ became the name of Schwitters’s one-man movement and philosophy. The word derives from a fragment of the word Kommerz , used in an early assemblage (Merzbild , 1919; destr.; see Elderfield, no. 42), for which Schwitters subsequently gave a number of meanings, the most frequent being that of ‘refuse’ or ‘rejects’. In 1919 he wrote: ‘The word Merz denotes essentially the combination, for artistic purposes, of all conceivable materials, and, technically, the principle of the equal distribution of the individual materials .... A perambulator wheel, wire-netting, string and cotton wool are factors having equal rights with paint’; such materials were indeed incorporated in Schwitters’s large assemblages and painted collages of this period, for example Construction for Noble Ladies (1919; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.; see fig. 1; see also COLLAGE). Schwitters’s essential aestheticism and formalism alienated him from the political wing of German Dada led by Huelsenbeck, and he was ridiculed as ‘the Caspar David Friedrich of the Dadaist Revolution’. Although his work of this period is full of hints and allusions to contemporary political and cultural conditions, unlike the work of George Grosz or John Heartfield it was not polemical or bitterly satirical. Schwitters’s ironic response to what he saw as Huelsenbeck’s political posturing was the extraordinary absurd story ‘Franz Mullers Drahtfrühling, Ersters Kapitel: Ursachen und Beginn der grossen glorreichen Revolution in Revon’ published in Der Sturm (xiii/11, 1922), in which an innocent bystander starts a revolution merely by being there. Another more macabre story, ‘Die Zwiebel’ (Der Sturm , x/7, 1919), underlines Schwitters’s romantic view of the artist as sacrificial victim and spiritual leader, a notion likewise quite antipathetic to Huelsenbeck’s dialectical materialism and scorn of bourgeois categories. (hide)

Examples of Schwitters' Work at Auction - 282 price results currently available

View all Auction Results

Literature: Books and Other References on Schwitters


'Kurt Schwitters: Catalogue Raisonne, 1937-1946 (Catalogue Raisonne)': by Kurt Schwitters


'Kurt Schwitters: Catalogue RaisonnÃ©, Vol. 2, 1923-1936': by Kurt Schwitters


'Kurt Schwitters: Catalogue Raisonne: Volume I 1905-1922': by Kurt Schwitters


'Kurt Merz Schwitters: A Biographical Study': by Gwendolen Webster

View full list of books and other references

Auction Houses that have sold Schwitters - 30

Allgauer
Auktionhaus Forty Seven
Auktionsverket
Bodiger
Bonhams
Bukowski
Catherine Charbonneaux
Christie's
Dawson and Nye
Finarte
Galerie Kornfeld und Cie.
Granier
Guy Loudmer
Hans Widmer
Hauswedell-Nolte

Ketterer
Koller
Kunstauktionshaus Schloss Ahlden
L.A. Modern
Lempertz
Moore Allen & Innocent
Phillips
Piasa
Rago Arts and Auction Center
Sotheby's
Swann Galleries
Van Ham
Van Sabben Auctions
Venator & Hanstein
Villa Grisebach

Web Resources with information about Schwitters - 34

Kurt Schwitters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters, 1887 - 1948 Biografie
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters - Time Line
Media Art Net | Schwitters, Kurt: Biography
Kurt Schwitters.1887-1948. Saksamaa.
KurtSchwitters < Hiaz < TWiki
Merz 410: "Irgendsowas"
Merzbild 25 A, Das Sternenbild
Stunned Art
AIM25: London Institute: Chelsea College of Art and Design ...
bits & pieces: chapter 2
schwitters
ARTEXPRESS v1: 8 Ken Clarke
Dada
Polish culture: "Kurt Schwitters"
Kurt Schwitters
Cleveland Museum of Art - Kurt Schwitters (German, 1887 - 1948)
Sprengel Museum - Kurt Schwitters Archives
RAFFINIERT.CH - Literatur - Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948)
MoMA.org | The Collection | Kurt Schwitters. (German, 1887-1948)
Kurt Schwitters
DaDa in Hannover
Tate Liverpool | Collection Displays
Kurt Schwitters, Jerome Rothenberg, Pierre Joris: Poems ...
Kurt Schwitters Artist Merz Armitt Museum Ambleside Lake District UK
Kurt Schwitters - BOOK CATALOGS , BIEF
Guggenheim Museum - Kurt Schwitters
Colin Morton: The Merzbook: Kurt Schwitters Poems
Kurt Schwitters
kurtschwitters.org
Tate Collection
Merzbau in Hannover

Artfact Live Auctions

Artfact Auction Database