Kurt Schwitters

In this collage, Kurt Schwitters arranged various pieces of paper into a composition. The irregular outlines reveal that the individual pieces were created by tearing paper up. They are all more or less rectangular in shape and are layered on top of one another. One scrap is quite transparent, allowing the layer beneath to show through. Two elements in petrol blue serve as visual accents: one strip forms a vertical that draws the composition upwards. The other is shorter but broader, giving it a heavy visual weight on the left-hand side of the picture. Schwitters also uses papers printed with text. Two of these overlap on the right-hand side of the image, rendering the words underneath no longer fully legible. Did Schwitters perhaps use a fragment of a biscuit advertisement? Clearly readable is the word Alt – old – above it, which is even underlined and thus counterbalances the visual weight of the composition on the left-hand side.

The word fragments invite associative play but resist any clearly defined meaning. Reflecting on what we associate with different words, colours or textures, and on the meanings they may carry, is a key part of engaging with a collage. Schwitters deliberately avoided assembling the paper fragments into representational forms, such as a ship, a meadow of flowers or a portrait. With Merz, his aim was an abstract art that no longer sought to use visual signs to depict reality.

Schwitters shared this approach with several other artists, including Paul Klee. The two probably met in 1919, when they took part in a joint exhibition at the gallery Der Sturm in Berlin. According to the memoirs of Klee’s wife Lily, Klee visited Sophie Küppers, the widow of a friend, in Hanover in the summer of 1923. On this occasion, he met Kurt Schwitters. Klee subsequently produced a work for Schwitters and is likely to have received this collage in exchange. It therefore comes from the collection of Paul Klee.