Kurt Schwitters

“I modellized the colour and form of the surface with paint, so that modellizing and painting become only one art.”

This sculpture by Kurt Schwitters is called coloured crescent, because its shape recalls that of a crescent moon. Unlike the moon in the sky, however, it does not stand upright, but lies on its “back”. It touches the ground at just one point and is slightly tilted to one side. If you were to give it a gentle nudge, it would probably rock back and forth. Schwitters painted the sculpture in bright, vivid colours, with each side treated differently: red on top, orange on the sides, and black and white. Depending on where we are standing, the sculpture’s appearance changes.

This sculpture, like the others in this area of the exhibition, is relatively small in scale. Almost all of them would fit into the palm of your hand. By contrast, the Merzbau – whose reconstruction you can walk through in the exhibition – is a sculpture of monumental size.

Schwitters was forced to leave the original Merzbau behind in Hanover when he fled to Norway in 1937. The fact that he began producing small sculptures that same year, is also connected to this experience of flight. His art was labelled “degenerate” by the National Socialists and removed from the collections of German art museums. Schwitters feared that they might also destroy the Merzbau in his private home. As a result, he began to make these small-scale sculptures. They were not tied to a specific location; they could even be slipped into a coat pocket and carried anywhere. Schwitters himself took them with him when he was forced to flee from Norway to England in 1940. His son Ernst later recalled that Schwitters was still carving a sculpture during the crossing from Norway to England.