Kurt Schwitters: Picture

“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.”

Kurt Schwitters

Schwitters (1921) in: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, London 1990, p. 68-69.
1920s

Color , Painting , Clothes

“One needs a medium. The best is, one is his own medium. But don't be serious because seriousness belongs to a passed time. This medium, called you yourself will tell you to take absolutely the wrong material. That is very good, because only the wrong material used in the wrong way, will give the right picture, when you look at it from the right angle. Or the wrong angle. That leads us to the new ism: Anglism. The first art starting from England [the country of Schwitters' forced stay, when he wrote this quote], except the former shapes of art.”

Kurt Schwitters

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), pp. 100-101 : in: 'That is my confession I have to make MERZ' (1940 – 1946), Kurt Schwitters.

Art , Way , Quotes , Time

“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”

Kurt Schwitters

Quote in his letter to Hans Richter, c. 1916; as quoted in 'Hannover-Dada' by Hans Richter; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, commissioned by w:Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 151
1910s

“Merz stands for the freedom of all fetters... Merz also means tolerance towards any artistically motivated limitation. Every artist must be allowed to mould a picture out of nothing but blotting paper, for example, provided he is capable of moulding a picture.”

Kurt Schwitters

1920s
Source: 'Merz. Für den Ararat geschrieben' (1920); as quoted in Kurt Schwitters, das literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, Dumont Cologne, 1973–1981, Vol. 5 p. 77.

Motivation , Freedom

“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 N. Y. 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 and use it for restoring the studio... Or would you prefer that you own with me half and half?..”

Kurt Schwitters

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), p. 48 : in a letter (30 April 1946) to Oliver Kaufmann, (department of Painting and Sculpture of the MOMA, New York).

Money , Books , Art , Time

“Nevertheless I like being in Norway [to escape the Nazi threat Schwitters fled to Norway, c. 1937], for it is a country of unparalleled beauty... I paint landscapes and portraits, model portrait, glue and paint abstract pictures and glue abstract plastic art; besides, I write poetry in German... What distresses me most of all is that I cannot live in my 'Merzraum' [a sculptured studio-space, Schwitters had built in Germany in the 1920's, but bomb-damaged in the war] and that it may be given up to destruction. For that reason I ask you once more, can you keep your ear to the ground again, to see if anyone in America is willing to give me an opportunity to shape a three-dimensional room?”

Kurt Schwitters

In a letter to w:Galka Scheyer, 24 July 1937; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 41.
1930s
Source: http://www.sprengel-museum.de/bilderarchiv/sprengel_deutsch/fotos/merzbau1933_530.jpg

War , Beauty , Art , Painting

“The custom official was desperate, he did not know whether they were pictures, wood ware or even arms [about his abstract collage art, Schwitters exported to France in 1939]. I got the impression he had an inner struggle with two options, either to have me arrested or to call the lunatic asylum. Finally he did not want to make a fool of himself, and accepted they were paintings, especially because another customs official knew me personally and confirmed that I was an artist.”

Kurt Schwitters

In a letter to Henriette Schwitters, (16 June 1939); as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 41.
1930s

Fools , Art , Painting , Personality