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

“In part spurred by Rauschenberg’s enthusiasm, [Jasper] Johns
made a point of studying Schwitters’s work in the collection of
the Museum of Modern Art. In many ways, Johns suggested,
Schwitters was the first Dada figure to have significant impact
on his thinking, preceding even Duchamp.”
Leah Dickerman, the MoMA Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, („Schwitters Fec.,” in
Isabel Schulz (ed.), Kurt Schwitters. Color and Collage, The Menil Collection, Yale University Press, New
Haven and London 2010, p. 88.
We can safely assume that no artist living today was not, one way or another, influenced
by Kurt Schwitters. Galerie Gmurzynska’s continued fascination with Schwitters dates
back 45 years, when in 1971 Antonina Gmurzynska organized her first in depth survey of
the German Avant-Garde, featuring an impressive selection of Schwitters’ works. Over
the years the relationship with Kurt Schwitters’ son, Ernst Schwitters, became a close
friendship and large-scale one-man exhibitions of Kurt Schwitters’ oeuvre would follow
throughout the history of the gallery up to this date. A particular highlight was the 1980
solo-show of Kurt Schwitters’ work in Paris at the FIAC, which was the first time that a
substantial retrospective by the artist had been shown in France.
With Kurt Schwitters MERZ we sought to expand this history and transport it to the
21 st century. This major retrospective exhibition brings together a unique selection of
seventy works across all media; including key works of each period, many of which have
been especially loaned from significant collections.
Presented in a fully transformed gallery space designed by the late Pritzker Price winning
architect Zaha Hadid, this collaboration resulted from the idea of an architectural homage
by Zaha Hadid to the famous ‘Merzbau’ of Kurt Schwitters.
With Galerie Gmurzynska’s unique Zurich location in the same building complex where
100 years ago the first DADA exhibition took place, celebrating this centennial, the
retrospective is realized in curatorial collaboration with the Cabaret Voltaire, where the
DADA movement originated in 1916.
An exhibition of this scale owes its existence to many individuals and institutions. We
are most fortunate for all the support we have received working on this once in a lifetime
retrospective.