Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage
March 26, 2011–June 26, 2011
From March 26 to June 26, the Art Museum will present Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage, the first overview of this pioneering artist’s work in the United States since his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1985. The exhibition will provide an unparalleled opportunity to view Schwitters’s experiments in depth, including a full-scale reconstruction of his ground-breaking Merzbau, which has never before been seen in this region.
Born in Hannover, Germany, in 1887, Schwitters is one of the most influential artists to have emerged in the years following World War I. In response to the turmoil then afflicting German society, Schwitters developed a unique form of artistic practice, one that merged art and life, embraced disparate media, and utilized found objects and printed materials. In 1919, Schwitters christened this body of work Merz —a neologism derived from the German Kommerz (commerce)—which culminated in a series of collages, assemblages, experimental poems, prints, and sculptures, most famously, the Merzbau, a three-dimensional environment initially realized in Hannover in the 1930s. Schwitters’s work bridges some of the period’s most important aesthetic vectors, among them Dada, constructivism, expressionism, and abstraction. It also exerted a profound influence on artistic developments after World War II: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns counted Schwitters among their sources of inspiration, and contemporary installation art is hardly conceivable without the precedent of the Merzbau.
Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage explores the relationship between collage and painting as well as color and material in the artist’s work. In addition to a reconstruction of the first version of the Merzbau, which was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943, the exhibition will include roughly eighty assemblages, reliefs, sculptures, and collages from 1918 to 1947, with an emphasis on those created during the 1920s and 1940s.
Organized by the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, under the direction of Josef Helfenstein, and guest curator Isabel Schulz, coeditor of the Kurt Schwitters catalogue raisonné and curator of the Kurt Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the exhibition will present key works from museums and private collections in America and Europe. A fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Schulz and noted scholars Leah Dickerman and Gwendolen Webster accompanies the exhibition. At Princeton, the exhibition will be supplemented with archival material from Princeton University’s Firestone Library and Marquand Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, including Dada periodicals and broadsides from the 1920s, an issue of Schwitters’s journal Merz, a first edition of his book of poems Anna Blume, Dichtungen (1919), and exhibition catalogues that document the reception of his work in the United States. A recording of Schwitters performing his phonetic poem, Ursonate (1922–32), will also be highlighted in the exhibition at Princeton.
Kelly C. Baum
Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage was organized by the Menil Collection, Houston. The exhibition in Houston was realized through the generous support of: Laura and John Arnold; Houston Endowment Inc.; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Catherine Morgan; Mrs. Nancy Brown Negley; Karen and Harry Pinson; Louisa Stude Sarofi m; Leslie and Shannon Sasser; the Taub Foundation in memory of Ben Taub, Henry J.N. Taub, and Carol J. Taub; Lionstone Group; Allison Sarofi m; Marion Barthelme and Jeff Fort; Sissy and Denny Kempner; Northern Trust; Ann and Mathew Wolf; Nina and Michael Zilkha; the City of Houston; and by proceeds from the inaugural evening of MEN OF MENIL. Exhibition underwriter Continental Airlines is the preferred airline of the Menil Collection.
The exhibition in Princeton has been made possible by the generous support of the Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, Exhibitions Fund; the Apparatus Fund; the Judith and Anthony B. Evnin, Class of 1962, Exhibition Fund; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Frances and Elias Wolf, Class of 1920, Fund; the Virginia and Bagley Wright, Class of 1946, Program Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art; an anonymous foundation; and the Partners of the Princeton University Art Museum. Additional support has been made possible.
March 26, 2011–June 26, 2011
From March 26 to June 26, the Art Museum will present Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage, the first overview of this pioneering artist’s work in the United States since his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1985. The exhibition will provide an unparalleled opportunity to view Schwitters’s experiments in depth, including a full-scale reconstruction of his ground-breaking Merzbau, which has never before been seen in this region.
Born in Hannover, Germany, in 1887, Schwitters is one of the most influential artists to have emerged in the years following World War I. In response to the turmoil then afflicting German society, Schwitters developed a unique form of artistic practice, one that merged art and life, embraced disparate media, and utilized found objects and printed materials. In 1919, Schwitters christened this body of work Merz —a neologism derived from the German Kommerz (commerce)—which culminated in a series of collages, assemblages, experimental poems, prints, and sculptures, most famously, the Merzbau, a three-dimensional environment initially realized in Hannover in the 1930s. Schwitters’s work bridges some of the period’s most important aesthetic vectors, among them Dada, constructivism, expressionism, and abstraction. It also exerted a profound influence on artistic developments after World War II: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns counted Schwitters among their sources of inspiration, and contemporary installation art is hardly conceivable without the precedent of the Merzbau.
Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage explores the relationship between collage and painting as well as color and material in the artist’s work. In addition to a reconstruction of the first version of the Merzbau, which was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943, the exhibition will include roughly eighty assemblages, reliefs, sculptures, and collages from 1918 to 1947, with an emphasis on those created during the 1920s and 1940s.
Organized by the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, under the direction of Josef Helfenstein, and guest curator Isabel Schulz, coeditor of the Kurt Schwitters catalogue raisonné and curator of the Kurt Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the exhibition will present key works from museums and private collections in America and Europe. A fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Schulz and noted scholars Leah Dickerman and Gwendolen Webster accompanies the exhibition. At Princeton, the exhibition will be supplemented with archival material from Princeton University’s Firestone Library and Marquand Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, including Dada periodicals and broadsides from the 1920s, an issue of Schwitters’s journal Merz, a first edition of his book of poems Anna Blume, Dichtungen (1919), and exhibition catalogues that document the reception of his work in the United States. A recording of Schwitters performing his phonetic poem, Ursonate (1922–32), will also be highlighted in the exhibition at Princeton.
Kelly C. Baum
Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage was organized by the Menil Collection, Houston. The exhibition in Houston was realized through the generous support of: Laura and John Arnold; Houston Endowment Inc.; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Catherine Morgan; Mrs. Nancy Brown Negley; Karen and Harry Pinson; Louisa Stude Sarofi m; Leslie and Shannon Sasser; the Taub Foundation in memory of Ben Taub, Henry J.N. Taub, and Carol J. Taub; Lionstone Group; Allison Sarofi m; Marion Barthelme and Jeff Fort; Sissy and Denny Kempner; Northern Trust; Ann and Mathew Wolf; Nina and Michael Zilkha; the City of Houston; and by proceeds from the inaugural evening of MEN OF MENIL. Exhibition underwriter Continental Airlines is the preferred airline of the Menil Collection.
The exhibition in Princeton has been made possible by the generous support of the Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, Exhibitions Fund; the Apparatus Fund; the Judith and Anthony B. Evnin, Class of 1962, Exhibition Fund; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Frances and Elias Wolf, Class of 1920, Fund; the Virginia and Bagley Wright, Class of 1946, Program Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art; an anonymous foundation; and the Partners of the Princeton University Art Museum. Additional support has been made possible.
