Untitled (Express)

Details

Inscribed by hand on the reverse of the backing card “Prelim. Oeuvre-Nr.: 1947, 1486 U”, alongside further annotations and a green label with the hand-written number “528”. Orchard/Schulz 3599. Exhibitions: Kurt Schwitters. 1887-1948, Minami Gallery,Tokyo 1960, cat. no.55;Kurt Schwitters, Ulmer Museum, Ulm 1961, list no. 25 (without catalogue); The George Economou Collection, Municipal Gallery of Athens, Athens 2011, colour cat. Ill. p. 225. Provenance: the artist’s estate; Ernst Schwitters, Lysaker/Norwegen, 1948-1972; Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1972; private collection, Switzerland; Villa Grisebach, Berlin 1.12.2007, lot 234; private collection, Europe.

Description

• Kurt Schwitters’ “Merzbilder” collages are full of harmony and order, despite the variety of different materials used
• The typewritten label “EXPRESS/EXPRÈS” underlines the urgency Schwitters’ artistic statement, as he was seriously ill at the time
• One of his last collages, created in exile in England

Upcycling, i.e. the recycling of waste into new products, is considered a current trend in our society. Schwitters was upcycling over a hundred years ago: since 1919, he has been gluing rubbish, advertisements and newspaper clippings together to create new works of art. He called these collages Merzbilder; they stood for reconstruction and a new beginning after the trauma of the First World War. The choice of recycled materials was less important to him: “The most important thing is the composition. Because the material is unimportant, I use any material if the picture requires it.” This Merz drawing, one of his last, is not only about form but also about a play with words: ‘Express – exprès’ which here certainly means urgent, i.e. the rapid delivery of a message. At the same time, ‘express’ also means intentional, extra, out of spite. Schwitters played with language early on; his Dadaist poems form an important part of his work. Individual words or fragments of words in the collages open up a world of associations to the viewer. The present collage was created in 1947. In February and March of that year, the artist experienced a physical collapse due to a blood congestion, combined with four days of blindness. For Schwitters, the confrontation with his own vulnerability and transience may have increased the urgency of his artistic statement – an express mediation. At the same time, he was also able to defy blindness and death. At this time Schwitters was living in England. He could also have thought of the English meaning of the word in the sense of “to express oneself or something”. This complexity of the meaning of a single word is reflected in the many layers of cardboard and paper strips stuck on top of each other. In this late work, Schwitter’s literary and artistic statement is once again combined to form an icon of Dadaist art.