Kurt Schwitters (1887 – 1948)
German painter and played an important role in Dada.
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When I was born 20.6.(18)87, I was influenced by Picasso to cry. When I could walk and speak I still stood under Picasso’s influence and said to my mother: ‘Tom’ or ‘Happening’ meaning the entrances of the canal under the street. My lyrical time was when I lived in the Violet Street. I never saw a violet. That was my influenced by Matisse because when he painted rose I did not paint violet. As a boy of ten I stood under Mondrian’s influence and built little houses with little bricks. Afterwards I stood under the influence of the Surrealists... In never stood under the influence of Dadaism because whereas the Dadaist created Spiegeldadaismus on the Zurich Lake, I created MERZ on the Leineriver, under the influence of Rembrandt. Time went on, and when Hans Arp made concrete Art, I stayed Abstract. Now I do concrete Art, and Marcel Duchamp went over to the Surrealists... and at all I have much fun about Art.
It needs a poet like Schwitters to show us that unobserved elements of beauty are strewn and spread all around us and we can find them everywhere in the portentous as well as in the insignificant, if only we care to look, to choose and to fit them into a comely order.
My name is Schwitters, Kurt Schwitters…. …I’m a painter and I nail my pictures… …I’d like to be accepted into the Dada Club
Merz art strives for immediate expression by shortening the path from intuition to visual manifestation of the artwork... they will receive my new work als they always have when something new presents itself: with indignation and screams of scorn.
In Hanover I built, before Hitler’s time, a studio called Merzbau. This has been reproduced very much, also in the book Dada, Surrealism, Fantastic Art of the Museum of Modern Art NY. I would like to go to Germany for restoring the Merzbau... Could I come with you to an agreement that you give me for this purpose some money? For example that I give you some pictures for the money ansd use it for restoring the studio... Or would you prefer that you own with me half and half...
The medium is as unimportant as I myself. Essential is only the forming... I take any material whatsoever if the picture demands it. When I adjust materials of different kinds to one another, I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form etc., I play off material against material, wood against sack clothes.
Consistent poetry is made of letters. Letters have no idea. Letters as such have no sound, they offer only tonal possibilities, to be valuated by the performer. The consistent poem weighs the value of both letters and groups.
I know that I am an important factor in the development of art and shall forever remain so. I say this with great emphasis, so that one can not say, at a later ate: ‘The poor fellow had no inkling of how important he was’. Nom I am no fool, nor am I timid. I know full well that the time will come for me and all other important personalities of the abstract movement, when we will influence an entire generation. However, I fear that I shall not experience this.
Art is a spiritual function of man, which aims at freeing him from life’s chaos. Art is free in the use of its means in any way it likes, but is bound to its laws and to its laws alone. The minute it becomes art, it becomes much more sublime than a class distinction between proletariat and bourgeoisie.
We, the founders of Dada-movement try to give time its own reflection in the mirror.
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