Illustration for "Das Kestnerbuch"
1919
Although Kurt Schwitters is generally associated with the German Dada movement, his work was more lyrical and poetic, less concerned with momentous current events in Berlin and Weimar. Yet in 1919, even the apolitical Schwitters was affected by the end of the war and the ensuing revolution that swept the country, quitting his job as an ironworker to become a full-time artist. "Everything had broken down," he later recalled, "new things had to be made from fragments," a principle from which his innovative Merzbild collages were born that winter of 1918-19 utilizing waste materials that he found in the street, and thus reclaiming society's detritus for use in art.
The woodcut print made for Das Kestnerbuch, the forms suggestive of his previous experiences among the machines in the Wülfell ironworks, shows Schwitters in a period of transition but still subscribing to the expressionism that many German artists saw as an affirmation of the new spirit. Hanging Down, made in England during the final year of his life, is one of Schwitters' last works. It bespeaks the maturity and calm tone of an artist who maintained his artistic principles despite persecution by the Nazis-his work was included in their notorious "Degenerate Art" exhibition in 1937-and later, surveillance by the British.
Woodcut
7 7/8 x 4 3/4 in., image size
10 1/8 x 7 1/4 in., sheet size
Gift of the Estate of Mark Tobey
87.127
