Museum PR Announcements News and Information

Menil Collection Opens Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage

The Menil Collection presents Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage, on view through January 30, 2011.

The German artist Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) remains one of the most influential figures of the international avant-garde. In the years following the First World War he coined the term “Merz,” in reference to his ambition to “make connections …between everything in the world.” Hoping to unify life and art by incorporating non-art into his work, this pioneer of installation art came closest to his ideal with his Merzbau, a room-size walk-in sculpture constructed of found materials.

Placing special emphasis on the significance of color and light in the artist’s work and delving into the relationship between collage and painting, Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage will present the first overview in the U.S. of the artist’s oeuvre since the MoMA retrospective of 1985. In addition to a full-scale reconstruction of the Merzbau, the exhibition will include roughly 100 assemblages, reliefs, sculptures, and collages from 1918–1947, with emphasis on Merz works from the 1920s and 1940s.

Seen against the background of the Menil Collection’s own holdings, Schwitters’s art opens the door to central concepts and working methods of a younger generation of artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly.

Guest curated by Isabel Schulz, co-editor of the Kurt Schwitters catalogue raisonné and curator of the Kurt Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, in collaboration with Menil Director Josef Helfenstein, Color and Collage will present key works from American and European museums and private collections.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Schulz along with noted scholars Leah Dickerman and Gwendolen Webster.

The exhibition will travel to Princeton University Art Museum March 26–June 26, 2011, followed by Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive August 3–November 27, 2011.

This exhibition is generously supported by gifts from Harry C. Pinson; Louisa Stude Sarofim; Leslie and Shannon Sasser; the Taub Foundation in memory of Ben Taub, Henry J. N. Taub, and Carol J. Taub; Lionstone Group; Marion Barthelme and Jeff Fort; Ann and Mathew Wolf; Michael Zilkha; and the City of Houston, and by proceeds from the inaugural evening of MEN OF MENIL. Exhibition underwriter Continental Airlines is the Preferred Airline of the Menil Collection.

Image: Kurt Schwitters Mz 371 bacco [Mz 371 bacco], 1922 Collage of cut and torn printed, handwritten, tissue, and coated papers on paperboard Sheet: 11; Image: 6-1/4 x Sheet: 7-1/2; Image: 4-7/8 inches The Menil Collection, Houston Photo: Hickey-Robertson, Houston

THE MENIL COLLECTION
1515 Sul Ross Street
Houston, TX 77006
Tel 713-525-9400
Fax 713-525-9444

www.menil.org

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *