I Love Kurt Schwitters' Artwork

To de-stress I have been immersing myself in stress relieving pursuits. I have been reading more and making more artist trading cards lately.

I have decided that my favorite artist is Kurt Schwitters. Formerly it was Claude Monet. So I have shifted gears dramatically.

A few weeks ago my family and I went to a big nearby library. I borrowed a bunch of books about Kurt Schwitters and on the Dada movement in general.

I have been not just looking at the reproductions of his artwork but have been reading about Kurt Schwitters. I hope to share some quotes with you in the future.

Perhaps what I love was that Schwitters began taking trash and discards from a sign printing company and using them to make collage art. The initial inspiration was to reject normal/typical art by creating something that was not a realistic image of some thing. The goal was to take something as lowly as garbage, tickets, scraps of paper, random ephemera, and to use it in a way that was pleasing to the eye and therefore was a work of art.

I enjoy doing this as well so to read now about Schwitters and the Dada movement, which I had never heard of until recently, is surprising and interesting to me.

If you want to see some of his art try a Google Image search by his name. You can also check your local library for books about Kurt Schwitters. I must have about 40 pounds of coffee table books here just on his artwork, borrowed from the library!

(I have been working to try and upload photos to this blog entry but it is not working. I have had a problem for about two weeks now and have not been able to upload images to Blogger, which is very frustrating.)

I’d love to buy some of the new books about Schwitters but one series has a price tag of $200 for each book in the series which is way, way out of my budget, to the library book borrowing will have to suffice for now.

Kurt Schwitters is considered to be a surrealist artist, an abstract artist, and part of the Dada movement also referred to as “Dadaism”. Most of his artwork was collage or assemblage, and he named his own style of artwork “merz’. If you want more information you can search on any of those keywords (or use them to search for books at your library).

There are some current ATC swaps for ‘my favorite artist’ and some for ‘abstract art’ and one for ‘security envelope’ art so I hope to make ATCs in the style of Kurt Schwittters which will then fit all three of those categories, and I will join those swaps!

Anyway to curl up with a book about art history or Kurt Schwitters is a perfect thing for me to do right before going to bed, to distress and unwind.

Technorati Tags: Kurt Schwitters, collage, assemblage, Dada, Dadaism.