Introduction: The World of Merz
Kurt Schwitters stands as one of the most inventive and influential figures of twentieth-century European modernism. Born in Hanover, Germany, on June 20, 1887, Schwitters navigated the turbulent artistic and political landscapes of his time, leaving behind a legacy characterized by radical innovation and a unique artistic philosophy he termed "Merz." Primarily associated with Dadaism, Surrealism, and Constructivism, Schwitters defied easy categorization, forging his own path through a diverse practice that encompassed collage, assemblage, sculpture, installation, poetry, sound art, typography, and graphic design. His life's work was a testament to the idea that art could be created from anything, blurring the lines between art and life, creation and detritus. He died in Ambleside, England, on January 8, 1948, an exile from his homeland but forever cemented in the annals of art history.
Schwitters's central contribution, the concept of Merz, emerged around 1919. It was more than just a style; it was a worldview, an approach to creativity that embraced fragmentation, chance, and the discarded materials of modern society. Merz symbolized the potential for renewal and transformation, finding beauty and meaning in the overlooked and the ephemeral. Through Merz, Schwitters sought to create a total work of art, one that integrated various media and reflected the chaotic yet interconnected nature of contemporary existence. His influence extends far beyond his immediate contemporaries, resonating deeply with later movements like Pop Art, Fluxus, and contemporary installation practices.
Early Life and Artistic Formation
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was born into a middle-class family in Hanover. His parents, Eduard and Henriette Schwitters, owned a ladies' clothing store, providing a relatively comfortable upbringing. Early signs of ill health, specifically epilepsy, would periodically affect his life, including leading to his discharge from military service during World War I. This condition, however, did not impede his artistic drive. His formal artistic training began relatively traditionally. From 1909 to 1914, he studied at the Kunstakademie Dresden (Dresden Academy of Art), where he received instruction in painting and drawing, focusing on academic and impressionistic styles.
During his time in Dresden and the years immediately following, Schwitters's work reflected the prevailing trends in German art, particularly Expressionism. He experimented with figurative and landscape painting, showing technical proficiency but not yet the radical departure that would define his mature work. He returned to Hanover in 1915, married Helma Fischer, and began to establish himself as an artist. The cataclysmic experience of World War I, though he saw limited active service due to his health, profoundly impacted his worldview and artistic direction, pushing him away from traditional modes of representation towards something more reflective of the fractured modern reality.
The post-war atmosphere in Germany, marked by political instability, economic hardship, and social upheaval, provided fertile ground for artistic experimentation. It was during this period, around 1918, that Schwitters began to engage more directly with the avant-garde. He encountered the burgeoning Dada movement, particularly through contacts in Berlin, and started incorporating found objects and fragments into his work, laying the groundwork for his unique Merz philosophy. This shift marked the beginning of his most significant artistic phase.
The Birth of Merz
The year 1919 was pivotal for Kurt Schwitters. It was then that he coined the term "Merz" to define his distinct artistic approach. The name itself was famously derived by chance from a fragment of printed paper containing the word "Kommerz" (from "Kommerz- und Privatbank" – Commerce and Private Bank) that he incorporated into one of his collages. Schwitters embraced the nonsensical, fragmented nature of the word, seeing it as a fitting label for an art form built from the remnants of society. Merz became his personal brand, a comprehensive concept encompassing all his creative activities.
For Schwitters, Merz was fundamentally about assemblage – the principle of combining disparate elements, often discarded materials like ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, fabric scraps, wood fragments, and other urban detritus, into new artistic wholes. This act of collecting and reconfiguring was not merely aesthetic; it was a philosophical statement. In a world shattered by war and undergoing rapid industrialization, Schwitters found artistic potential in the refuse of civilization. He saw Merz as a way to heal fragmentation, to create harmony out of chaos, and to demonstrate that value could be found where society saw none.
Merz was inherently anti-hierarchical. Schwitters declared that any material was suitable for art, breaking down the traditional distinctions between high art materials (like oil paint and marble) and everyday objects. This democratic approach extended across media; Merz could be a picture (Merzbild), a sculpture (Merzplastik), a building (Merzbau), or even poetry and performance. It was an all-encompassing artistic principle aimed at synthesizing art and life. His first Merz picture, created in 1919, marked the definitive start of this lifelong project.
Merz Pictures: Collages from Detritus
The Merz Pictures (Merzbilder) are perhaps Schwitters's most widely recognized body of work. These collages and assemblages, created throughout his career, exemplify the core tenets of his Merz philosophy. Using materials scavenged from the streets, waste bins, and printing houses of Hanover and later cities of exile, Schwitters composed intricate works that balanced formal abstraction with the evocative power of found objects. Each scrap of paper, piece of wood, or rusted metal fragment carried traces of its former life, imbuing the artworks with layers of history and meaning.
Schwitters's approach to collage was distinct from that of his Cubist predecessors like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who primarily used collage to explore pictorial space and representation. While influenced by Cubism, Schwitters pushed collage towards greater abstraction and materiality. His compositions often featured dynamic arrangements of shapes, textures, and colors, sometimes incorporating painted elements alongside the found materials. The works ranged from small, intimate pieces to larger, more complex constructions that bordered on relief sculpture.
Notable examples of his Merz Pictures demonstrate the evolution and range of this practice. Early works retain hints of representation or narrative, while later pieces become increasingly abstract, focusing on formal relationships. Works like Das Undbild (The And Picture, 1919) or Revolving (1919) show his early mastery of assembling diverse materials into cohesive compositions. Later collages, such as For Kate (1947), created during his final years in England, possess a poignant lyricism, reflecting his enduring creativity despite personal hardship. The Skittle Picture (date uncertain, likely early 1920s), initially met with public ridicule, highlights the challenging, unconventional nature of his work for contemporary audiences. Mara I is another significant example showcasing his intricate layering technique.
The Merzbau: An Ever-Evolving Environment
Schwitters's ambition to create a total work of art found its most monumental expression in the Merzbau (Merz Building). Beginning around 1923 in his family home in Hanover, Schwitters started transforming the interior space into a sprawling, walk-in sculpture, an architectural assemblage that grew organically over more than a decade. The Merzbau was not a static object but an ongoing process, constantly evolving as Schwitters added new structures, grottoes, and collected objects to its labyrinthine form. It eventually spread through multiple rooms, piercing ceilings and floors.
The Hanover Merzbau, often referred to as the "Cathedral of Erotic Misery," was a deeply personal environment. It incorporated not only abstract constructions made from wood, plaster, and found objects but also small niches and shrines dedicated to friends, fellow artists, and personal memories. These included contributions from artist friends and mementos – locks of hair, broken pieces of jewelry, photographs. It was a living archive of Schwitters's life and relationships, a physical manifestation of his interconnected Merz universe. Artists like Hans Arp and Hannah Höch were among those memorialized within its structure.
Tragically, the original Merzbau in Hanover was destroyed by an Allied bombing raid in 1943, leaving only photographs and Schwitters's descriptions as records of its existence. The legends surrounding it – tales of evicted tenants, hidden compartments, and its overwhelming presence – contribute to its mythical status. Schwitters attempted to recreate the Merzbau concept during his exile. He began a second Merzbau in Lysaker, Norway, near Oslo, between 1937 and 1940, but had to abandon it when fleeing the Nazi invasion. This structure later burned down in 1951. His final attempt, the Merz Barn, was started in a barn in Elterwater, in England's Lake District, in 1947, with support from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He worked on it until his death in January 1948, leaving it unfinished. Only one wall of the Merz Barn survives, now housed in the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Schwitters and Dada
Kurt Schwitters's relationship with the Dada movement was complex and multifaceted. He arrived at Dadaist ideas somewhat independently but quickly connected with key figures of the movement after 1918. He established close contact with Berlin Dadaists such as Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch, and international figures like Hans Arp and Tristan Tzara. He participated in Dada events and publications, and his Merz concept shared Dada's anti-art, anti-bourgeois spirit, its embrace of absurdity, chance, and the integration of everyday life into art.
However, Schwitters maintained a degree of separation from the core Dada groups, particularly the politically charged Berlin Dadaists led by Richard Huelsenbeck. Huelsenbeck famously excluded Schwitters from the Berlin Club Dada, allegedly finding his work too bourgeois or insufficiently political. Schwitters, in turn, was perhaps less interested in direct political agitation and more focused on the aesthetic and spiritual possibilities of his Merz project. He preferred his own term, Merz, to Dada, emphasizing the constructive and synthesizing aspects of his work over Dada's often purely iconoclastic or nihilistic tendencies.
Despite these differences, Schwitters is undeniably a major figure associated with Dada. His magazine, Merz, published between 1923 and 1932, became an important international platform for avant-garde art and literature, featuring contributions from Dadaists and Constructivists alike. His use of collage, photomontage, sound poetry, and typography aligns closely with Dada practices. His famous sound poem, the Ursonate, is considered a masterpiece of Dada phonetic poetry. Ultimately, Schwitters absorbed the spirit of Dada but channeled it into his unique, enduring vision of Merz.
Connections and Collaborations
Throughout his career, Kurt Schwitters was deeply engaged with the international avant-garde network, fostering numerous connections and collaborations that enriched his work and influenced others. His relationship with the Dutch artist and De Stijl proponent Theo van Doesburg was particularly significant. They shared an interest in Constructivist principles, typography, and the integration of art forms. Together, they embarked on a "Dada campaign" in the Netherlands in 1923, giving provocative performances that combined lectures, poetry readings, and music, spreading Dadaist ideas.
Schwitters also maintained close ties with the Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky, who spent time in Hanover in the early 1920s. They collaborated on issues of Schwitters's Merz magazine and shared an interest in new typography and abstract design. This connection highlights Schwitters's bridge between the anarchic spirit of Dada and the more ordered, utopian ideals of Constructivism. He synthesized elements from both movements within his Merz framework.
His friendship and artistic dialogue with fellow German artist Hannah Höch were particularly enduring. Höch, a key figure in Berlin Dada known for her pioneering photomontages, shared Schwitters's interest in collage and the critique of social norms. They visited each other's studios, exchanged ideas, and collaborated, notably on the satirical anti-magazine Schleudern und Bessere (Slingshot and Better). Their mutual respect and shared sensibilities fostered a supportive artistic relationship that lasted for many years.
Beyond these key figures, Schwitters interacted with a wide circle of artists and writers. His Merz magazine featured work by individuals like Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara, László Moholy-Nagy, and many others. He exhibited alongside artists like Max Ernst and participated in major avant-garde exhibitions. His Merzbau contained contributions and mementos from numerous friends, including artists like Otto Gerhard. He also engaged with art dealers and publishers like Paul Cassirer, navigating the structures of the art world even as his work challenged its conventions. These interactions underscore Schwitters's role as a central node in the web of European modernism.
Beyond Collage: Poetry, Sound, and Design
While best known for his visual art, Kurt Schwitters was a true multimedia artist whose creativity extended significantly into literature, sound, and design. His literary output, particularly his poetry, was as experimental and unconventional as his collages. His most famous poem, An Anna Blume (To Anna Blossom/Eve Blossom), published in 1919, became an instant sensation and source of controversy. A nonsensical love poem constructed from clichés, advertising slogans, and fragmented phrases, it baffled and outraged conservative critics while being hailed by the avant-garde as a revolutionary piece of writing, embodying the Dada spirit of linguistic disruption.
Schwitters's exploration of sound culminated in the Ursonate (Primal Sonata), a monumental work of phonetic poetry composed between 1922 and 1932. Consisting entirely of abstract sounds, letters, and non-semantic syllables arranged into a classical sonata structure, the Ursonate is a powerful performance piece that pushes language beyond meaning into pure sound and rhythm. Schwitters performed it frequently, using his voice to create a dynamic and often humorous auditory experience. It remains a landmark of sound poetry and performance art, influencing generations of artists and musicians.
His playful subversion extended to narrative forms as well. He wrote several absurdist fairy tales, collected in publications like Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales. These stories often parodied traditional folk tales, employing bizarre characters (like a man with a reflective glass nose revealing inner thoughts) and illogical plots to critique societal norms, authority, and bourgeois values with characteristic humor and irony. Furthermore, Schwitters was an accomplished graphic designer and typographer, applying his Merz principles to commercial work, including designs for the Pelikan ink company and the city of Hanover, demonstrating his belief in the integration of art into all aspects of life.
Exile and Later Years
The rise of the Nazi regime in Germany marked a dark turn for Kurt Schwitters and the avant-garde. His art was deemed "degenerate" (Entartete Kunst) by the authorities, included in the infamous Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937, and removed from German museums. Facing increasing persecution and danger, Schwitters fled Germany in early 1937, seeking refuge in Norway, where his son Ernst was already living. He settled in Lysaker, near Oslo, and continued his artistic practice, beginning work on his second Merzbau.
His time in Norway was cut short by the German invasion in April 1940. Schwitters was forced to flee once again, this time escaping to Great Britain. Upon arrival, he was interned as an enemy alien, spending over a year in various camps, most notably Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man. Despite the difficult conditions, he remained artistically active, creating small sculptures from porridge, organizing exhibitions, and giving poetry readings for fellow internees, demonstrating his irrepressible creative spirit.
After his release in late 1941, Schwitters moved first to London, where he struggled financially but reconnected with the art world, meeting British artists like Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. He eventually settled in Ambleside in the Lake District in 1945. It was here, in the final years of his life, that he embarked on his last major project, the Merz Barn. Despite failing health and limited resources, he worked tirelessly on this final iteration of his environmental artwork. He received a grant from the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the project but died of pulmonary edema on January 8, 1948, before the Merz Barn could be completed. He became a British citizen the day before his death.
Legacy and Influence
Kurt Schwitters's legacy is that of a relentless innovator whose work fundamentally expanded the definition of art in the 20th century. His concept of Merz, with its embrace of found materials, cross-disciplinary approach, and integration of art and life, proved profoundly influential for subsequent generations of artists. His pioneering use of collage and assemblage directly paved the way for movements like Nouveau Réalisme in France and Pop Art in Britain and America. Artists like Robert Rauschenberg, whose "Combine" paintings explicitly merged painting with found objects, acknowledged a direct debt to Schwitters.
The immersive, environmental nature of the Merzbau anticipated later developments in installation art and environment art. Artists exploring site-specificity, process-based work, and the creation of total environments, such as Eva Hesse, owe something to Schwitters's radical transformation of space. His experiments with sound poetry and performance resonated with the Fluxus movement of the 1960s and continue to inspire contemporary performance artists and sound artists. Even contemporary figures like Damien Hirst have cited Schwitters as an influence, particularly regarding the use of unconventional materials and the blurring of art and reality.
Today, Schwitters's works are held in major museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Sprengel Museum in his hometown of Hanover, which houses a significant archive of his work. He is recognized not just as a key figure of Dada and related movements, but as a unique visionary whose Merz philosophy offered a powerful and enduring model for artistic creativity in the modern world. His ability to find poetry and structure in the discarded fragments of everyday life continues to captivate and inspire.
Conclusion: The Enduring Relevance of Merz
Kurt Schwitters remains a towering figure in modern art history, a testament to the power of individual vision and creative resilience. His life journey, marked by artistic breakthroughs, personal challenges, and forced exile, mirrors the tumultuous history of the 20th century. Through it all, his commitment to the Merz principle – the art of assemblage, of finding harmony in fragments, of elevating the mundane to the level of art – remained unwavering. He demonstrated that art could be anywhere and made from anything, a radical proposition that continues to challenge conventional boundaries.
From the intricate beauty of his Merz Pictures to the ambitious, immersive environments of the Merzbau projects, and the linguistic playfulness of his poetry and sound works, Schwitters crafted a multifaceted oeuvre that defies simple labels. He was simultaneously a Dadaist provocateur, a Constructivist designer, a Surrealist dreamer, and, above all, the sole proprietor and practitioner of Merz. His legacy lies not only in the specific objects he created but in the enduring philosophy that art is a continuous process of collecting, transforming, and integrating – a way of making sense of, and finding beauty within, the complex and often chaotic fabric of modern life.
