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

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE AND WORK OF KURT SCHWITTERS · by Siegfried Gohr
t
52
exhibition in 1937 at the Haus der deutschen Kunst (House of German Art) in Munich
that subsequently toured throughout Germany. Schwitters soon became aware that
his career in Germany was at an end. Already before he finally went into exile in
Norway in 1937, he had frequently spent time there. Germany and the other countries
of his earlier activities, such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, offered scarcely any
opportunities for having any resonance for his work. Helma Schwitters remained in
Hanover, looking after the house. What had caused consternation among visitors to
his exhibition in Hildesheim already in 1922 — namely, that Schwitters was working
simultaneously both realistically and on Merz — became a vital necessity for him in
order to earn some income. He did some portrait-painting, and offered his landscapes
to tourists in Norway, however, with only moderate success. Realistic work represents
a significant portion of his entire oeuvre which raises it above the status of mere
bread-and-butter work. Orientation in Norway, of course, was difficult, and even
a continuation of his artistic path was unclear. Collages came about continually; in
1938/39 Schwitters attempted an abstract style, a mixture of ‘impressionist’ dabs
of colour and flowing forms, but also nourished by recollections of his constructivist
works after 1923. However, he returned to the material image into which organic
found pieces such as algae, mussels, bark, etc. increasingly found their way.
•
Schwitters incorporated everything into his work that defined his life-world.
Although he had nothing to do with traditional historical painting, the history of his
own period was in his work, whether it be in the form of paper snippets, bus tickets,
Kurt Schwitters,
Norway 1933
advertising, place names, wood, plaster, metal, wheels, bits of nature, and a lot more
besides. His Merz periodicals as well were a mirror of the artistic strivings during the
Weimar Republic. Therefore it amounts to a crude misappraisal to contemptuously