“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

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Kurt Schwitters 32

German artist 1887–1948

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“Please help me, in order to get us invited [to the United States]. Helma [his wife] will then come later and I will work there and soon pay back the people who lend me the money. But finally I must get out of this internment [because the English mistrusted Schwitters, being a German] and further away from Norway, I want to be with all of you. Please get it done quickly and write to me about the outcome. Maybe my art is in danger and I, of course, with it. At last I would like to work on my abstracts again and find appreciation for them. Who knows what will happen?”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), p. 46 : in a letter (22 October 1941) to Käthe Steinitz, written from the internment camp on Isle of Man, England.

“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 (1887–1948) German artist

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

“We [Frida and Diego] moved from the house on Reforma [street] to Coyoacán, and that had an enormous influence on me. How we painted the house and the Mexican furniture, all that influenced my painting a lot. While still on Reforma, I painted a self-portrait [Self-portrait 'Time Flies', 1929] that is owned by Morillo Safa. Once in Coyoacán I began to make paintings with backgrounds and Mexican things in them. I painted the portraits of Hale's sister.... and the one of Diego, which I did not finish [this painting is lost and was never documented before]. Those three paintings, who knows where they are. Mirillo Safa has the third self-portrait [her Self-portrait of 1930], showing me bald and sitting in a cane chair.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

1950
Source: 1946 - 1953, "Song of herself"; interviews by Olga Campos, Sept. 1950, Chapter 'My Painting', p. 75

“One of my first sculptures was made of bicycle parts. I was living at that time in a attic in the red light section of Amsterdam. I started to work without any specific materials. I was looking in the street like when I was a young boy, in the garbage cans, for ropes, wires, and paint. I left my parents in 1940. Years later I saw an exhibition of Kurt Schwitters at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam curated by Willem Sandberg and there I saw the real 'objet trouvé'; until then I had never heard about it. Schwitters was a shattering experience.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 79 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

“There are people who have made me see shapes — and others I thought of a great deal, even people I have loved, who make me see nothing. I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970s, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

“Then we went down to his work room, in the horrible beautiful Merz grotto [the 'Merz-Haus', built by Kurt Schwitters, where broken wheels paired with matchboxes, wire lattices with brushes without bristles, rusted wheels with curious Merz cucumbers… How often did we 'p-lay' in this room! Schwitters called playing, considering the sweat, working. There we glued together our paper pictures, and as I tossed away one of my glued-together works one morning, Schwitters asked, 'You don't like it? Can I have it?' – 'What do you want with this failed piece of toast?' Schwitters took a good look at it and said, 'I'll put what's on top on the bottom, I'll stick a little Merz nose in this corner and I'll sign the bottom Kurt Schwitters.' And, yes indeed, this collage became a wonderful picture by Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters was a wizard, just as Hokusai was a wizard.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

In 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling – Memories of Kurt Schwitters Hans Arp 1956; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken - commissioned by Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam - NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, pp. 140-141
1950s

“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 (1887–1948) German artist

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

“I started doing paintings of landscapes in private and wanted to show people what I could do, and to really do that, I needed to do portraits, so I started practising.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Lee Rondganger, Artist with unusual technique a Sexpo hit, The Star, South Africa, 28 September 2007, 2, Independent Online]

“I really learned how to look at art.... before 1960. And in a sense that sharpened my eye for abstract pictures. Because, it's light in the painting that makes it work. It's light in the painting that makes it work.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about the role of light
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

“Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) American painter

Quoted in Bentley and Esar, Treasury of Humorous Quotations (1951)

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Kurt Schwitters 32

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