From the Bookshelf

The highlight of our recent Berkeley trip was seeing the Kurt Schwitters exhibit at the Berkeley Museum of Art. The exhibition book is a marvelous retrospective of his life and work. It was highly interesting to see these early (1920s through late 1940s) examples of collage and assemblage. And, how Schwitters often used his bits of paper and ephemera in a painterly fashion - form and colour - rather than for their intrinsic ephemeratic value. He called his new style of art Merz and published for many years a magazine of the same name. He left his native Germany in the late 1930s for Norway to escape the growing Nazi tide and then fled from there to England where he lived until his death in 1948. A fascinating exhibit and an interesting book. Once more a big thank you to Michelle Ward for giving me the "heads-up" on this exhibition! It runs thru the end of November, so if you're anywhere in the area it's well worth a visit.