Kurt Schwitters
Born – Hanover, Germany 1887
Died Ambleside, England 1948
Kurt Schwitters worked as an artist, writer, architect, typographer and publisher. These various interests were reflected in a multimedia approach to his art. His early interest in cubism was quickly superseded by an association with the leading Dadaists Hausmann, Hoch and Arp. In 1918, Schwitters was one of the founders of the Dada group in Hanover. As part of a Dadaist anti-art statement, he made collages and montages out of a combination of unrelated discarded elements, objects and materials. His aim was to disrupt the acceptance of bourgeois values while producing a new construction from the disparate, disordered fragments. His random assortments utilized bits of torn-up paper, bus tickets, chicken wire and even the wheels of a pram. Chocolate makes use of a chocolate wrapping and the postmark torn from a letter. Schwitters referred to his assemblages as “Merz”. This was also the title of a Dadaist magazine he ran frm 19233 to 1932. around 1920, he started to build his first “Merzbau”, a huge construction of refuse designed to fill a whole building. Exile in Norway was followed in 1940 by flight to England after the German invasion.
Masterpieces:
- Spring Pictures
- Le Point Sur I
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.