Kurt Schwitters and
Theo van Doesburg
KURT SCHWITTERS AND
THEO VAN DOESBURG
Poster for the “Kleine Dada Soirée”, 1922/1923
Lithographic poster
Image size: 11- 3/4 by 11- 3/4 in. (29.85 by 29.85 cm)
Edition size unknown
This lithographic poster, “Kleine Dada Soirée”, was made for a “traveling tour” around various Dutch cities, co-hosted by Schwitters and Van Doesburg. Van Doesburg was a constructivist artist who was enjoying a separate affiliation with the Dadaists. At each venue of the tour the event was titled “Kleine Dada Soirée”.
The poster has fold marks as originally it was sent out in a mailing announcement. The work is considered rare as it only appears on the market occasionally.
Kurt Schwitters (1887 – 1948) was the most important artist in the German Dada group. He worked in various media (including poetry as well as art), but gained his fame from being one of the pioneer and most famous collage (and assemblage) artists of the 20th century. For his own amusement, he invented a word personal only to him and his work: "Merz". Most of his work (both his artwork, as well as a periodical bearing that title that he published during the 1920s, (during the Dada years and afterwards) were titled, and later catalogued under that banner.
In the winter of 1922-23 Schwitters and his cohort, Theo Van Doesburg, arranged a "Dada Tour" in Holland, the poster for which was the now-famous "Kleine Dada Soirée", designed collaboratively, which we are now presently offering. Because of being one of the "forbidden artists" on the list created by the Third Reich, Schwitters fled Germany for Norway. After passing some years there, settled in the countryside in England where he remained until his death.
Theo van Doesburg (Dutch, 1883 – 1931) is best known, along with Piet Mondrian, as the founder and leader of the international art movement De Stijl (The Style). De Stijl began in 1917 in the Netherlands and, renouncing naturalism, promoted a simplified aesthetic in the visual arts based on strict ideals of vertical and horizontal geometry.
Van Doesburg visited Berlin and Weimar in 1921 and the following year taught at the Weimar Bauhaus. He was interested in Dada at this time and in 1922 worked with Kurt Schwitters (with whom he made the “Dada Tour”) as well as Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara, and others.