ART CITIES:L.A.-Schwitters-Miró-Arp
Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in Zürich. It arose as a reaction to World War I and the nationalism that many thought had led to the war. Dada was the first Conceptual Art Movement where the focus of the artists was not on crafting aesthetically pleasing objects but on making works that often upended bourgeois sensibilities and that generated difficult questions about society, the role of the artist, and the purpose of art.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Archive
Comprising over 90 key works from American and European Museums and major International Private Collections, the exhibition “Schwitters Miró Arp” at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel Gallery in Los Angeles, offers fresh perspectives on the work of Kurt Schwitters and Hans Arp, in the context of works by Joan Miró, as well as deeper insights into the movements of Dada and Surrealism. The exhibition was first presented in Zürich in Summer 2016 during Manifesta 11, to celebrate the centenary of the Dada movement in the city of its birth. The new iteration of this exhibition includes a significant addition of works by Hans Arp. Highlights include Schwitters’ collage, “Untitled (ABLE)” (1947), and “Merzbild 1B Bild mit rotem Kreuz” (1919), and Arp’s “Tête; Lèvres écossaise” (1927). In 1918, Schwitters and Arp developed a close friendship founded on a lively exchange of artistic ideas. In 1926, Miró and Arp shared a home in the Les Fusains artists’ colony at Rue de Tourlaque 22 in Paris, where Schwitters also travelled each year. Arp had first become acquainted with collage in 1914 in the studio of Pablo Picasso, he conveyed the new technique to Schwitters and it went on to become an essential facet of Schwitters’ oeuvre. In turn, Miró’s experiments with the assemblage of everyday objects in the late ‘20s were strongly influenced by Schwitters, Arp and the Dada movement. Each of these artists shared an interest in the fusion of painting and sculpture through the art of assemblage. While Schwitters dramatically expanded the artistic frame of reference with his “Merzbilder” particularly through the use of materials found on the street, and Arp continued to develop his abstract organic reliefs, Miró found his own raw yet poetic way of engaging with the material. Miró’s play with geometric and organic forms can be interpreted as a link between the artistic expression of Schwitters, who had already begun to distance himself from the reproduction of natural forms in 1918, and the biomorphic compositions created by Arp. Their mutual influence upon one another resonated throughout their careers and into their late works.
Info: Curator: Dieter Buchhart, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, 901 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, Duration 16/10/16-8/1/17, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-20:00, www.hauserwirth.com
