Best known for his extraordinary abstract collages, German artist Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) is one of the most influential figures of the international avant-garde. Emphasizing the significance of color and light in the artist’s work and delving into the relationship between collage and painting, this handsome volume accompanies the first U.S. retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre in twenty-five years.
Affiliated with Dada and the Constructivist movement in the years following WWI, he coined the term “merz” to describe his ambition to “make connections, preferably between everything in the world.” Schwitters’s merz gave seemingly worthless objects of urban waste—train tickets, newspaper fragments, bits of wire—new life as compositional elements in his installations, assemblages, sculptures, and collages. Hoping to unify life and art by incorporating everyday objects into his work, this pioneer of installation art came closest to his ideal with Merzbau, a room-size walk-in sculpture constructed entirely of found materials.
Alongside images and analysis of a full-scale reconstruction of Merzbau, this book includes an illustrated chronology and 90 color plates of Schwitters’s assemblages, reliefs, sculptures, and collages, with emphasis on merz works from the 1920s and 1940s. The selection not only illuminates the artist’s response to the dominant art movements of his time but also illustrates his unique composition and design. Essays by prominent scholars provide new perspective on the artist who created poetry from the commonplace.

Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage

Arts & Photography

Schulz, Isabel

History & Criticism

The Menil Collection

German painter, author, and mixed media artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) is regarded as one of the most significant artists of the international avant-garde. He studied art at the Dresden Academy, and created the nonsense word "Merz," to describe his one-man artistic movement&nbsp;after the end of the first World War. Merz, as defined by Schwitters, is a "concept of the greatest possible unreservedness and artistic freedom in the choice forms of expression. Merz art is abstract and characterized by the way it crosses borders within the media."&nbsp; Drawing on a wealth of rich material held by the artist's estate, this book provides an informative introduction and overview to Schwitter's entire Merz oeuvre, from the experimental magazine of the same name, which is celebrated as a noteworthy work of graphic design to his work on constructivism and surrealism, including aspects of painting, sculpture, and typography that were a precursor of modern installation art. Including 80 color illustrations, this book will engage fans of Schwitters work and reinvigorate interest in his innovative art.

Kurt Schwitters: Merz Art

Hirmer Publishers

Kurt Schwitters. Merzkunst

Klinkhardt & Biermann

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