Kurt Schwitters: a portrait from life

Abstract

Kate Steinitz, a long-time friend and collaborator of Kurt Schwitters, gives an eye-witness report of his personality, recounts the stages of his life, and presents a concise evaluation of his significance in modern art. Innovative in several media and mixing the media for new artistic creativity, Schwitters used collage and montage for pictorial, verbal, musical and sculptural effects. A vital contributor to Dada and sympathizer with the Bauhaus artists and avant-garde architects, Schwitters developed a very personal style in his Merz art, comprising and interrelating poetry, prose, typography, theater, plastic arts and architecture in a concept of total art. His unique designs anticipated modern techniques in almost every area of artistic expression. With Kate Steinitz, he composed children's books and a libretto for an avant-garde science fiction jazz opera. Witty apercus characterize Professor Steinitz's vivid portrayal of Schwitters, the man and the artist. (HK) A portrait from life means the presence of the model. As one of the very few survivors of Kurt Schwitters' period, I will try to evoke his presence, not as an established factor in the textbooks of art history, but as his friends experienced him: strong, dominating, always surprising, full of contradictions; a melancholic, full of laughter and joie de vivre in spite of everything; a Till Eulenspiegel who loved to play tricks. He was controversial to many. Kurt Schwitters had an unusual sensibility of perception, both visually and phonetically. He saw torn pieces of paper even in the gutter as delightful colorspots and used them for his collages, as he had used brush strokes in painting with pigment. He heard the noise, pleasant and disagreeable, from the outside world which was generally not conceived of as music. From this sound-rubbish he grabbed scraps for his sound-collage, to compose his Sonate in Urlauten (Sonata in Primeval Sounds). *All of us who knew Kate Steinitz and witnessed her witty, vivid portrayal of Kurt Schwitters are in deep sorrow, having heard of her death. As Professor Steinitz was unable to supply several additional re fer ence s to her revised manuscript, we print it here in the form in which it was returned to us (H.K.).