IVAM and MACA collaborate to showcase Kurt Schwitters and early 20th century art
The exhibition exchange between the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno in Valencia and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante presents the work of Kurt Schwitters within a broader, touring dialogue. The show, spanning two parts, highlights Schwitters alongside peers under a program designed to maintain ongoing conversations between collections. The presentation brings together pieces from the IVAM collection that trace the pioneers of the early decades of the twentieth century and items from the twentieth century art collection kept in MACA’s holdings. The collaboration aims to offer audiences supplementary readings, cross-sectional perspectives, and contextual support for works that illuminate a shared vision of modernity, language, and communication across generations. This exchange also reinforces connections between tradition and new artistic directions.
In this installation, Schwitters is placed in the first gallery, standing with contemporaries who shaped modern art. The room groups him with artists such as Julio González, Pablo Gargallo, and Juan Gris, signaling a dialogue across media and movements. This arrangement invites viewers to explore a spectrum of innovations from collage and assemblage to foundational tendencies in early modernism, as they intersect with Schwitters’s own practice.
Two works by Kurt Schwitters on loan from IVAM to MACA
Director of IVAM states that this agreement represents IVAM’s commitment to fostering a network of inter-institutional relations that enrich culture, support mutual progress, and ensure optimal use of resources. The loan and its presentation mark a notable milestone in celebrating two Schwitters works from the IVAM Collection, inviting fresh readings and historical revisitations from new angles.
Cultural advisor underscores that at MACA, these artifacts reveal never-before-seen references within the city and offer new points of entry into art history.
IVAM proposes a revision of the art after the wars at MACA.
The city’s leadership recognizes the ongoing value of the collaboration, noting that the MACA and IVAM agreement continues to yield benefits. The current dialogue with Schwitters situates items from the twentieth century art collection on a new plane, fostering a more expansive conversation about postwar imagery and material culture.
Artist profile: Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters, born in Hanover, emerged as a central figure for experimental practice in the early twentieth century. A key contributor to the Dada movement, he embraced collage and assemblage using found and discarded materials. He conceived the term Merz to describe a new form of art that combined poetry, magazines, theater, and sculptural structures, ultimately coordinating disparate media into a unified, if unconventional, language.
Schwitters abandoned formal architectural studies in his hometown and moved to Dresden, where he enrolled at the Kunstakademie and began painting. His early work drew from Impressionism and later Expressionism, and by 1918 he presented pieces in a cubo-futurist idiom at the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin. A year later he produced his first collages and montages, laying the groundwork for a multidisciplinary approach that would redefine modern art.
Schwitters’s practice evolved into a distinctive, self-directed stream of creation that continued to redefine the boundaries of art. He described his process as assembling the pieces of a world left in ruins after a great upheaval, seeking to build a new reality from remnants. The term Merz grew to symbolize his expansive experiments across poems, magazines, theater, and sculptural architectures known as Merzbau.
His career faced political oppression when Nazi authorities labeled his work degenerate art in 1933, prompting his exile from Germany. The artist relocated, seeking refuge first in Norway and later in the United Kingdom, where he faced dislocations and challenges during wartime. He endured a long period of travel and hardship, moving through cities and communities in search of safety and creative space. Schwitters died in Kendal in 1948, leaving behind a legacy that continues to influence contemporary practices across media and disciplines.