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Grey and Yellow

Grey and Yellow

Artist/Maker (German, 1887–1948)
Date1947
MediumPaper, newspaper, and canvas collage with grey-blue tissue paper, paint, and red crayon or chalk on brown cardboard
DimensionsOverall: 8 1/4 × 6 5/8 in. (21 × 16.8 cm)
Credit LineFriends of Art Fund
Object number1955.6
Status
Not on view
Copyright© Estate of Kurt Schwitters / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NYMore Information
A bit of red crayon on this work allies it to the act of drawing, but it primarily exemplifies the art of collage that was the artist's forte. Schwitters chose materials that were readily available in postwar England, where he was living in exile in rapidly deteriorating health, and avoided patterns or textures in favor of drab, flat, and nearly colorless shades of brown and grey. The useless fragment of the unused postal stub is alienated from its original function, which was to safeguard the arrival of a money order, and the tiny bit of newspaper may refer to the dull banality of everyday life.
Exhibition History
Drawings and Watercolors from the Oberlin Collection
  • University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI (March 11, 1956 - April 1, 1956 )
Kurt Schwitters
  • The Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX (April 15, 1962 - May 6, 1962 )
  • Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, CA (June 19, 1962 - July 17, 1962 )
  • Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH (September 27, 1962 - October 18, 1962 )
  • The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (November 4, 1962 - November 25, 1962 )
  • Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneaopolis (January 7, 1963 - February 4, 1963 )
  • The J. B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY (February 14, 1963 - March 7, 1963 )
Oberlin Friends of Art: 25 Years of Collecting
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (March 5, 1963 - March 26, 1963 )
A Sense for Scale: Models and Miniatures by 20th-Century Masters
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (July 1, 1995 - October 1, 1995 )
American Responses to European Modernism, 1875-1925
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (November 4, 1995 - February 19, 1996 )
A Sense of Scale II: The Art of the Miniature
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (October 27, 1998 - January 31, 1999 )
Modern and Contemporary Art
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (July 22, 2008 - September 13, 2008 )
Out of Line: Drawings from the Allen from the Twentieth Century and Beyond
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (September 1, 2009 - December 23, 2009 )
Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage
  • The Menil Collection, Houston, TX (October 22, 2010 - January 30, 2011 )
  • Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ (March 26, 2011 - June 26, 2011 )
  • UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA (August 2, 2011 - November 27, 2011 )
Collections
  • Modern & Contemporary
This record was created from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator. Noticed a mistake? Have some extra information about this object? Please contact us.