Kurt Schwitters
Construction for Noble Ladies1919

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Abstract assemblage with found objects — spoked wheel, diagonal green beam, metal rod, and painted shapes — on a fragmented, multi-toned painted ground in a wooden frame

Assemblage relief combining painted surfaces with found objects: a spoked wheel, diagonal green rod, circular disk, and small mechanical fragments arranged against an abstract painted background in muted earth tones, burgundy, and teal, with a monogram and date at lower left.

Artist or Maker: Kurt Schwitters
Germany, 1887-1948
Title: Construction for Noble Ladies
Place Made: Germany
Date Made: 1919
Medium: Oil, watercolor, gouache, wood, metal, leather, cork, paper, and board on board, mounted on wood
Dimensions: 40 1/2 × 33 in. (102.87 × 83.82 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Norton Simon, the Junior Arts Council, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick R. Weisman, Mr. and Mrs. Taft Schreiber, Hans de Schulthess, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Janss, and Mr. and Mrs. Gifford Phillips
Accession Number: M.62.22
Classification: Collages
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: Artist, poet, theorist, sound artist, and composer Kurt Schwitters was affiliated with many of the most important art movements of the early twentieth century, including Expressionism, Dada, De Stijl, Constructivism, and the Bauhaus. But beginning in 1918, the final year of World War I, Schwitters pioneered a wholly unique visual idiom he called Merz, a term he used for the rest of his life to describe the collage and assemblage works he made with scavenged and discarded materials.

Construction for Noble Ladies is one of the largest and most important of Schwitters’s Merz pictures. It was constructed in 1919, a period of intense creative energy and experimentation in German society, which was being remade from top to bottom following wartime defeat, the fall of the monarchy, revolution, and ongoing rampant inflation. The assortment of everyday detritus within the work includes a funnel, a broken carriage wheel, a flattened toy train, and a ticket for shipping a bicycle by rail. The picture’s “noble lady” has been tipped over, her profile visible on the lower right, gazing upward.
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Wall label, 2021.
Provenance: The artist (1887-1948); in 1948 by inheritance to his son Ernst Schwitters, Lysaker; [sold in 1960 to Marlborough Fine Art, London]; sold in 1962 to LACMA.
Selected Bibliography: Powell III, Earl A., Robert Winter, and Stephanie Barron. The Robert O. Anderson Building. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986.
Hopkins, Henry T., ed. Illustrated Handbook of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. West Germany: Bruder Hartmann, 1965.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
Price, Lorna. Masterpieces from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988.
Der Hang Zum Gesamtkunstwerk: Europäische Utopien seit 1800. Aarau: Verlag Sauerländer, 1983.
Seldis, Henry J. "West Coast Milestone." Art in America 53, no.2 (1965): 92-109.
Orchard, Karin, and Isabel Schulz, eds. Catalogue raisonné: Kurt Schwitters. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2006.
Copyright: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Related Unframed

Kurt Schwitters
Construction for Noble Ladies1919

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Artist or Maker: Kurt Schwitters
Germany, 1887-1948
Title: Construction for Noble Ladies
Place Made: Germany
Date Made: 1919
Medium: Oil, watercolor, gouache, wood, metal, leather, cork, paper, and board on board, mounted on wood
Dimensions: 40 1/2 × 33 in. (102.87 × 83.82 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Norton Simon, the Junior Arts Council, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick R. Weisman, Mr. and Mrs. Taft Schreiber, Hans de Schulthess, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Janss, and Mr. and Mrs. Gifford Phillips
Accession Number: M.62.22
Classification: Collages
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: Artist, poet, theorist, sound artist, and composer Kurt Schwitters was affiliated with many of the most important art movements of the early twentieth century, including Expressionism, Dada, De Stijl, Constructivism, and the Bauhaus. But beginning in 1918, the final year of World War I, Schwitters pioneered a wholly unique visual idiom he called Merz, a term he used for the rest of his life to describe the collage and assemblage works he made with scavenged and discarded materials.

Construction for Noble Ladies is one of the largest and most important of Schwitters’s Merz pictures. It was constructed in 1919, a period of intense creative energy and experimentation in German society, which was being remade from top to bottom following wartime defeat, the fall of the monarchy, revolution, and ongoing rampant inflation. The assortment of everyday detritus within the work includes a funnel, a broken carriage wheel, a flattened toy train, and a ticket for shipping a bicycle by rail. The picture’s “noble lady” has been tipped over, her profile visible on the lower right, gazing upward.
>

Wall label, 2021.
Provenance: The artist (1887-1948); in 1948 by inheritance to his son Ernst Schwitters, Lysaker; [sold in 1960 to Marlborough Fine Art, London]; sold in 1962 to LACMA.
Selected Bibliography: Powell III, Earl A., Robert Winter, and Stephanie Barron. The Robert O. Anderson Building. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986.
Hopkins, Henry T., ed. Illustrated Handbook of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. West Germany: Bruder Hartmann, 1965.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
Price, Lorna. Masterpieces from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988.
Der Hang Zum Gesamtkunstwerk: Europäische Utopien seit 1800. Aarau: Verlag Sauerländer, 1983.
Seldis, Henry J. "West Coast Milestone." Art in America 53, no.2 (1965): 92-109.
Orchard, Karin, and Isabel Schulz, eds. Catalogue raisonné: Kurt Schwitters. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2006.
Copyright: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

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