Kurt Schwitters: Merz (2016) – Norman Rosenthal interviews Damien Hirst

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In November, Schwitters publishes Merz 11. Typoreklame, an issue devoted to advertising, typography, and graphic design. It includes an essay by Schwitters, “Thesen über Typographie” (Theories about Typography), describing the importance of simple modern fonts and wellbalanced design. At the end of the year Schwitters and Steinitz establish a publishing house called Apossverlag. They produce the fairy tales Hahnepeter. Die Märchen vom Paradies (Peter the Rooster, The Fairy Tale about Paradise) and Die Scheuche (The Scarecrow), which are published the following year. They also found the series “Neue Architektur” (New Architecture) and publish as its first (and last) volume, Grosstadtbauten by Ludwig Hilberseimer. 1925 A photo of Schwitters’s studio as it appeared in 1920 (a forerunner of the Hanover Merzbau) is published in the book Die Kunstismen by Lissitzky and Arp. Merz 13 Merz—Grammophonplatte (Merz—Phonograph Record) is published. It includes a recording of the scherzo from Schwitters’s “Ursonate.” On February 14 he performs the entire “Ursonate” publicly for the first time at a recital, which takes place in Potsdam in a private home. Schwitters continues to publish (mostly grotesques and criticism), perform, and exhibit, mainly in Germany. 1926 In April, in preparation for the Société Anonyme’s upcoming “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” Dreier visits Schwitters at his studio in Hanover. She attends a recital of his work at the Bauhaus in Dessau, and the pair takes a weeklong trip to the Netherlands. The exhibition opens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, November 19, and travels to Anderson Galleries, New York, January 25—February 5, 1927; Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, February 25—March 20, 1927; Toronto Art Gallery, April 24, 1927. It includes eleven works by Schwitters in Brooklyn but only seven elsewhere. Later in the year, Schwitters makes trips to Berlin, Dresden, and Prague. In December he participates in the opening ceremonies of the Bauhaus building in Dessau. 1927 Schwitters organizes a major retrospective exhibition of his work titled “Grosse Merzausstellung 1927”, which travels to several German cites, including Wiesbaden, Bochum, and Barmen. In January, ten collages by Schwitters are included in the exhibition “Constructivist Drawings and Posters,” University of California, Los Angeles. The presentation is organized by artist and dealer Galka Scheyer. Scheyer, a native of Germany, had immigrated to the United States in 1924; in 1925 she moved to San Francisco and later settled permanently in Los Angeles. From California, she promoted German artists, primarily Lyonel Feininger, Alexei Jawlensky, Paul Klee, and Oscar Schlemmer, until her death in 1945. Her collection, including works by Kurt Schwitters, was donated to the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California. On March 12, with Carl Buchheister, Rudolf Jahns, Hans Nitzschke, and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Schwitters establishes die abstrakten hannover, a subdivision of the Berlin artists’ group Die Abstrakten, Internationale Vereinigung der Expressionisten, Futuristen, Kubisten und Konstruktivisten e. v. The group disbands in 1931. Schwitters makes a monthlong visit to France and Belgium in April that includes a performance of the “Ursonate” at the gallery Le sacre du printemps, Paris. While in Paris, he meets artists Tristan Tzara, André Breton, and E.L.T. Mesens; he will make annual trips to Paris through 1931. Schwitters’s play Schattenspiel (Shadow Game), ca. 1925, is performed in an avant-garde theater in Prague on May 8; Schwitters attends the premiere. An English translation by Myrtle Klein of “An Anna Blume” titled “Anna Blossom Has Wheels” appears in the June issue of Transition (no. 3), an American literary journal edited by Eugene Jonas. Schwitters collaborates with Steinitz on a libretto for the grotesque opera Der Zusammenstoss (The Collision), for which they win second prize at a competition in Vienna, August 1928. Schwitters meets with Robert Michel, Willi Baumeister, Jan Tschichold, Walter Dexel, Friedrich Vordemberge- Gildewart, César Domela, and László Moholy-Nagy to establish an association of commercial artists called ring neue werbegestalter. 1928 Schwitters travels to Rome, Naples, and Sicily for five weeks as a guest student at the secondary school Technische Hochschule in Hanover. “A Small Intimate Exhibition Arranged by the Société Anonyme,” Arts Council Gallery at the Barbizon Hotel, New York, February 20—March 3, includes work by 162
Schwitters. Dreier and composer lmre Weisshaus (pseudonym Paul Arma) perform Schwitters’s sound poems at a recital in Dreier’s home in New York, November 28. Schwitters contributes an essay titled “Gestaltende Typographie” (Constructive Typography) to the September issue of Der Sturm 19, no. 6, 265—69. In addition, Schwitters and Steinitz are commissioned to design a brochure for the Test der Technik,” which takes place in Hanover on December 8. 1929 Schwitters joins the artist’s group dedicated to abstraction Cercle et Carré, Paris, founded by Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Michel Seuphor; members include Le Corbusier, Piet Mondrian, and Wassily Kandinsky. Schwitters’s work is included in the landmark “Premiere exposition internationale du groupe Cercle et Carré,” Galerie 23, Paris, April 1930. In the spring, Dreier visits Schwitters again in Hanover, this time with Duchamp. In July, Helma and Kurt Schwitters make their first journey to Scandinavia; until 1936, Schwitters will make annual summer trips to Norway, where he earns money by selling traditional landscape paintings and occasional portraits. Schwitters designs all of the ephemera for the October inauguration of the first apartments built for the Dammerstock-Siedlung, an architectural development project in Karlsruhe headed by Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school. In October the US stock market crashes, signaling the beginning of a worldwide economic depression. The art market likewise collapses. 1930 In the early 1930’s, Schwitters begins working on an ongoing room-size installation of built and found architectural and collage elements meant to be seen as a single artwork, which in 1933 he christens Merzbau. Initially occupying only his studio, the Merzbau eventually grows to take over several rooms of the family’s residence. Schwitters continues to work on the Merzbau until he leaves Hanover in January 1937. The work is destroyed by Allied bombs on October 8 and 9, 1943. Schwitters publishes the brochure “Die neue Gestaltung in der Typographie” (New Design in Typography). Schwitters joins the PEN Club, an English literary society founded in London in 1921, and establishes an author’s group in Hanover, “Ring Hannoverscher Schriftsteller” with Christof Spengemann and Carl Credé. Dreier visits Schwitters again in Hanover on March 30; she purchases his Relief mit rotem Segment (Relief with Red Segment), 1927. In what is likely his last public performance in Germany, Schwitters reads several works, including “An Anna Blume” and “Schacko,” on December 21 at “Künstler in Front” in the Capitol-Hochhaus, Hanover. 1931 Schwitters is elected an Honorary President of the Société Anonyme. Five of his works are included in a show organized by the Société Anonyme, “An International Exhibition Illustrating the Most Recent Development in Abstract Art: Special Exhibition Arranged in Honor of the Opening of the New Building of the New School,” at the New School for Social Research, New York, January 1— February 2. The exhibition travels to Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, February 18—March 8. Franz Müller’s Wire Springtime, Merzbild 9 b das grosse lchbild (Merz Picture 9 b The Great I Picture), 1919 (Museum Ludwig, Cologne), and Albert Finzlerbild (Albert Finzler Picture), 1926 (Sprengel Museum Hannover, loan from Finanz Informatik), are reproduced in the third edition of Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (Art of the Twentieth Century) by Carl Einstein. Schwitters joins Paris-based “abstraction-création,” an artists’ association formed in opposition to Surrealism that grew out of the short-lived Cercle et Carré. The group’s journal publishes images of the Hanover Merzbau and other works by Schwitters between 1932 and 1934. 1932 The Hannover Kunstverein includes Schwitters in their one-hundredth anniversary exhibition, March—April. Schwitters’s “Ursonate” is published as Merz 24; with typography by Jan Tschichold. Schwitters records the poems ‘Scherzo” and “An Anna Blume” for the broadcaster Süddeutsche Rundfunk AG, Stuttgart, May 5. Helma and Kurt Schwitters visit Guernsey, the Channel Islands; Brittany, France; and Spain, Morocco, and Italy. 1933 In January, Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor and CHRONOLOGY 163
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KURT SCHWIT TERS EXIBITION DESIGN B
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KURT SCHWIT TERS galerie gmurzynska
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“In part spurred by Rauschenberg
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SUMMARY 10 MERZ (Extract from “AR
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One could make up a catechism of me
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Merz House was my first piece of Me
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Almost all the pioneers of modern a
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‘constructivist’ period, which,
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Sonata and after the Dadaists perio
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Ernst Schwitters, Photograph of Kur
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All this changed at a stroke with t
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As the world changed, as the way of
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Kurt Schwitters, who knew a lot of
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you liked my sonata. May I introduc
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Postcard Kurt and Helma Schwitters
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the Merzbau in Waldhausenstraße 5
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Kurt Schwitters: Merz (2016) – Norman Rosenthal interviews Damien Hirst

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