Modern Age
Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948)
German Early Abstraction painter.
Kurt Schwitters was a German artist who invented Merz, a personal aesthetic philosophy encompassing collage, assemblage, poetry, typography, and architecture. Born in Hanover, he trained at the Dresden Academy and initially worked in a figurative Expressionist mode before discovering his mature voice through found materials and discarded ephemera. In 1919, rejected by Berlin Dada for being too bourgeois, he created his own parallel movement centered on the syllable 'Merz'—a fragment torn from an advertisement for 'Kommerz und Privatbank'—which became his signature for transforming urban detritus into art.
Schwitters' Merzbau, a constantly evolving sculptural environment that consumed his Hanover home, represented his most ambitious project: a walk-in assemblage that grew organically over fifteen years, incorporating found objects, painted surfaces, and grottos dedicated to friends. He also published the journal Merz, collaborated with Constructivists like El Lissitzky and Theo van Doesburg, and championed international avant-garde exchange. His work synthesized Dada's anarchic spirit with Constructivist rigor, creating a hybrid aesthetic that was neither purely destructive nor purely geometric.
Forced into exile by the Nazi regime, which labeled his work 'degenerate,' Schwitters fled to Norway in 1937 and then to England in 1940, where he lived in poverty and internment before settling in the Lake District. He began new Merzbau projects in both countries, though neither survived intact. Despite exile and hardship, he continued creating collages and late abstract paintings until his death in 1948, leaving a legacy that profoundly influenced assemblage art, concrete poetry, and installation practice.
The words the record keeps using: playful, austere, melancholic, inventive, material, fragmentary, democratic, constructive.
At a glance
- Lived 1887–1948
- Origin German
- Worked in London, Dresden, Oslo (Kristiania)
- Era Modern Age
- Movements Early Abstraction, De Stijl
- Mediums Ink on paper, Oil on panel, Oil on canvas
- Techniques Oil glazing, Constructive brushstroke, Geometric abstraction
Works in the archive
- Merzbild 1A (The Psychiatrist), 1919 (Private collection)
One of the earliest numbered Merzbilder, this pioneering assemblage combines painted areas with collaged paper, fabric, and found objects. The cryptic title suggests psychological depth beneath the abstract surface.… - Das Undbild, 1919 (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart)
The 'And Picture' is one of Schwitters' largest and most important early Merzbilder, representing his breakthrough synthesis of painting and collage. The title's semantic playfulness ('und' meaning 'and' in German)… - Entrance Ticket (Mz 456), 1922 (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
A small-scale masterpiece of found paper collage, this work assembles ticket stubs, commercial labels, and printed ephemera into a tightly organized composition. The title highlights Schwitters' democratic approach—an… - Merzbild Kijkduin, 1923 (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)
Named after a Dutch seaside resort, this larger Merzbild demonstrates Schwitters' mature synthesis of Dada randomness and Constructivist structure. The composition integrates wood fragments, printed papers, and painted… - Merz 1925, 1. Relief in Blue Square, 1925 (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)
This relief assemblage shows Schwitters at his most Constructivist, with geometric elements carefully arranged within a blue-painted square format. Wood, metal, and painted elements project from the surface in…
What was said
I could see no reason why one should not use old material as well as new in creating a work of art. I called it Merz; it was a prayer about the victorious end of the war, for once again peace had won in the end; everything had broken down in any case and new things had to be made out of fragments.
One can even shout out through refuse, and this is what I did, nailing and gluing it together. I called it Merz, it was a prayer about the victorious end of the war. Everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of fragments. It is a kind of picture or abstract work in which all conceivable materials can be used.
The medium is as unimportant as I myself am. Essential is only the forming. Because the medium is unimportant, I take any material whatsoever if the picture demands it. When I adjust materials of different kinds to one another I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form, I play off material against material.
Lineage
Passed on to Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns
What would Kurt make of your idea?
The Artiquity Studio makes a new picture in this hand's manner from a few words or a photograph — grounded in the technique, palette and subjects recorded above, and always credited "after Kurt Schwitters", never passed off as a found work. Open the Studio with Kurt · Keep a life moment the way Kurt would · Pictures made after Kurt