Merzpainting 1c The Doublepicture
メルツ絵画1c 二重絵画
- Birth Year
- 1887
- Death Year
- 1948
- Date
- 1920
- Technique, Material, Format
- assemblage, oil on cardboard, wood
- Dimension
- 15.6 x 13.7 cm
- Category
- Oil or Other Painting by Foreign Artist
- Inventory Number
- 88-OF-011
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK: “Merzpainting 1c The Doublepicture” by Kurt Schwitters (video / January 2021)
This unique video series deliberately includes no commentary, allowing you unimpeded enjoyment of artworks from the Yokohama Museum of Art collection in detail-rich close-up and from new angles.
The small "painting" is in an olive-colored frame made by the artist. Affixed to a cardboard base with glue and nails are tram tickets, a piece of cloth, shoe sole leather, sealing wax, cardboard, and a piece of lead. Blue, yellow, green, and cream-colored paint can be seen in places. While the ticket at the bottom left is straight, the other elements fanning from the bottom right to the top left give the impression of curving movement. The artist, Kurt Schwitters, created his abstract paintings from scraps of discarded objects. In his Merzpicture series, each object is considered as a color, with the various colors balancing each other. The artist is "indifferent" to each object’s particular function or meaning. The name Merz comes from the name of a bank readable at its fragmented advertisement on another Merzpicture, but it is also related to the German word meaning "to erase."
(NAKAMURA Naoaki)