Kurt Schwitters: Merz (2016) – Norman Rosenthal interviews Damien Hirst

KURT
SCHWIT
TERS
EXIBITION DESIGN BY
ZAHA HADDID
CABARET VOLTAIRE MERZ
EXHIBITION DESIGN BY
ZAHA HADID
ZURICH
GALERIE GMURZYNSKA

KURT
SCHWITTERS
Volume I

KURT
SCHWIT
TERS
galerie gmurzynska
20th century masters since 1965
w w w · g m u r z y n s k a · c o m

Kurt Schwitters. MERZ
June 12th to September 30th 2016
Exhibition architecture by
Zaha Hadid
In collaboration with
Cabaret Voltaire,
Adrian Notz
Celebrating 100 years of
Dada Zurich
Presented at the original location
of the first DADA exhibition

“In part spurred by Rauschenberg’s enthusiasm, [Jasper] Johns
made a point of studying Schwitters’s work in the collection of
the Museum of Modern Art. In many ways, Johns suggested,
Schwitters was the first Dada figure to have significant impact
on his thinking, preceding even Duchamp.”
Leah Dickerman, the MoMA Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, („Schwitters Fec.,” in
Isabel Schulz (ed.), Kurt Schwitters. Color and Collage, The Menil Collection, Yale University Press, New
Haven and London 2010, p. 88.
We can safely assume that no artist living today was not, one way or another, influenced
by Kurt Schwitters. Galerie Gmurzynska’s continued fascination with Schwitters dates
back 45 years, when in 1971 Antonina Gmurzynska organized her first in depth survey of
the German Avant-Garde, featuring an impressive selection of Schwitters’ works. Over
the years the relationship with Kurt Schwitters’ son, Ernst Schwitters, became a close
friendship and large-scale one-man exhibitions of Kurt Schwitters’ oeuvre would follow
throughout the history of the gallery up to this date. A particular highlight was the 1980
solo-show of Kurt Schwitters’ work in Paris at the FIAC, which was the first time that a
substantial retrospective by the artist had been shown in France.
With Kurt Schwitters MERZ we sought to expand this history and transport it to the
21 st century. This major retrospective exhibition brings together a unique selection of
seventy works across all media; including key works of each period, many of which have
been especially loaned from significant collections.
Presented in a fully transformed gallery space designed by the late Pritzker Price winning
architect Zaha Hadid, this collaboration resulted from the idea of an architectural homage
by Zaha Hadid to the famous ‘Merzbau’ of Kurt Schwitters.
With Galerie Gmurzynska’s unique Zurich location in the same building complex where
100 years ago the first DADA exhibition took place, celebrating this centennial, the
retrospective is realized in curatorial collaboration with the Cabaret Voltaire, where the
DADA movement originated in 1916.
An exhibition of this scale owes its existence to many individuals and institutions. We
are most fortunate for all the support we have received working on this once in a lifetime
retrospective.

The project was only made possible by an extraordinary partnership with late Zaha Hadid
and Zaha Hadid Architects, who have allowed us to reimagine the legendary ‘Merzbau’
Gesamtkunstwerk as part of this retrospective timely presented for the Dada centennial
in Zurich. We are therefore deeply thankful to Patrik Schumacher, the visionary torch
bearer of Zaha Hadid Architects, Maha Kutay, Woody Yao, Melodie Leung and Filipa
Gomes to name but a few.
Our utmost gratitude must go to all authors for this important book, many of whom
created texts exclusively for this publication, acting as true collaborators in delineating new
approaches to see Schwitters’ multifaceted oeuvre and revealing his great importance
spanning an inexhaustible array of genres and media. We extend special thanks to
Norman Rosenthal, Flavin Judd, Adrian Notz of Cabaret Voltaire, Prof. Dr. Sigfried Gohr,
Dr. Jonathan Fineberg and Dr. Karin Orchard.
We are extremely grateful to Damien Hirst for his exclusively insightful interview
underlining the absolute importance of Kurt Schwitters as a game changer of 20 th century
art and his enduring influence on all contemporary art today.
For her relentless help and all the supportive information about the connections of
Malevich and Schwitters we are very grateful to Jewgenija Petrova, Deputy Director of
the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. We extend our particular gratitude to Dr. Karin
Orchard and Dr. Isabel Schulz, Sprengel Museum Hannover, for their continuous help
with all the comprehensive and extremely important research facilitating the overarching
number of image requests.
In their essential assistance for the catalog providing saliently scarce documents and
images our greatest debt must be to Kurt und Ernst Schwitters Stiftung, Hanover;
Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin; Graphische Sammlung der ETH Zürich;
Tate, London; Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, New Haven; RKD – Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis, Den Haag;
Historic England Archive, Swinden; National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Hammer
Museum, Los Angeles and the Menil Foundation, Houston.
We are also extremely grateful to all the private and institutional lenders, without their
support this exhibition would not have been possible.
Krystyna Gmurzynska & Mathias Rastorfer

SUMMARY
10 MERZ (Extract from “ARARAT” December 19, 1920)
Kurt Schwitters
14 i (A Manifesto), Sturm, Vol. 13, No. 5, 1922
Kurt Schwitters
16 Anna Blossom has Wheels
Kurt Schwitters (1942)
18 Kurt Schwitters photo album
32 Kurt Schwitters, as writer, poet and lecturer
Ernst Schwitters (1958)
40 Kurt Schwitters
Werner Schmalenbach (1980)
46 Introduction to the life and work of Kurt Schwitters
Siegfried Gohr (2016)
56 The consequence of Dada: MERZ
Adrian Notz (2016)
76 Schwitters: Tending the Enchanted Garden
Jonathan Fineberg (2016)
88 Kurt Schwitters: A genius in friendship
Siegfried Gohr (2016)
100 Kurt Schwitters: Guestbook of the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
110 Kurt Schwitters & Kazimir Malevich
120 The Eloquence of Waste
Kurt Schwitters’ work and its reception in America
Karin Orchard (2000)
138 How to look on Modern Art in America
Ad Reinhardt (1961)
140 Kurt Schwitters: I urgently recommend that everybody
buy their Christmas presents now
Norman Rosenthal (2016)
148 Norman Rosenthal in conversation with Damien Hirst (2016)
154 Double Bladed Axe
Flavin Judd (2016)
159 Chronology
167 Selected Bibliography
173 Solo Exhibitions

MERZ
(EXTRACT FROM “ARARAT” DECEMBER 19, 1920)
Kurt Schwitters
10

One could make up a catechism of means of expression, were it not pointless, as pointless as
the intention of expressing a meaning through a work of art. Every line, colour, shape has its
distinct meaning. Every combination of lines, colours and shapes expresses a distinct meaning.
The meaning can only be expressed by this special combination, it cannot be translated. One
cannot render the meaning of a picture in words, just as one cannot paint the meaning of a word,
the word ‘and’, for example.
What a picture expresses is, however, so important that it is worth consistently striving for.
Every attempt to depict natural forms detracts from the power of consistency in working out the
expression. I rejected any reproduction of natural forms and painted only using pictorial forms.
These are my abstractions. I harmonised the components of a picture with one another, just as I
had done at art school, only not in the cause of reproducing nature, but in the cause of expression.
Now even the striving for expression in a work of art seems to me harmful to art. Art is a basic
concept, exalted as the deity, inexplicable as life, indefinable and purposeless. The work of art is
created by the artist’s devaluing of its components. I only know how I do it, I only know my material
on which I draw, I do not know for what purpose.
The material is as unimportant as I am. What matters is the shaping of it. Because the material
does not matter, I use anything to hand, if the picture requires it. As I can arrange different kinds
of material to go together, I have a distinct advantage over pure painting in oils: in addition to
juxtaposing colour with colour, line with line, form against form etc. I can also match material
against material, say wood against sacking. I call the philosophy that gave rise to this kind of
artistic creation “Merz”.
The word “Merz” had no meaning when I invented it. Now it has the meaning I have given it. The
meaning of the term “Merz” changes with the changing consciousness of those who continue to
work within the meaning of the term.
Merz demands freedom from any restriction for the process of artistic creation. Freedom is not
unbridled licence, but the outcome of a strict artistic discipline. Merz also implies tolerance
regarding any limitation on artistic grounds. An artist must be permitted to compose a picture
entirely out of pieces of blotting paper, as long as he has the power to create. To reproduce
natural elements is not important to a work of art. But representation of actual objects, inartistic
in themselves, can make part of a picture, when integrated with the other parts of it.
I have previously also gone in for other art forms, poetry, for instance. The basic ingredients of poetry
are letters, syllables, words, sentences. Evaluation of these ingredients against one another creates
poetry. The sense is only important where it is evaluated as one more factor.
I evaluate sense against nonsense. I prefer nonsense, but that is just a personal affair. I feel sorry for
nonsense, because hitherto it has hardly ever been artistically shaped, that is why I love nonsense.
11

Here I must mention Dadaism, which like me cultivates nonsense. There are two groups of Dadaists,
the Core- and the Shell-Dadas, of which the latter reside mainly in Germany. Originally there were
only Core Dadaists, the Shell-Dadaists under their leader Huelsenbeck shelled themselves off
from this core, and in the splitting tore away parts of the core. The shelling took place to the
accompaniment of loud howling, singing of the Marseillaise, and the dispensing of kicks by the
elbows, a tactic Huelsenbeck employs to this day. Dadaism under Huelsenbeck became a political
affair. The well-known Manifesto of the Dadaist Revolutionary Central Committee of Germany
demands the introduction of extreme Communism as a Dadaist requirement. Huelsenbeck in his
History of Dadaism of 1920, published by Steegemann, writes: “Dada is a German bolshevik affair”.
The Central Manifesto mentioned above also calls for “the most brutal war against Expressionism.”
Further, in the History of Dadaism Huelsenbeck writes: “Art should really be punishable by
flogging.” In the introduction to the recently published Dada Almanac Huelsenbeck writes: “Dada
carries on a sort of anticulture propaganda.” It follows that Shell-Dadaism is politically orientated,
against art and against culture. I am tolerant and every man is welcome to his own opinions, but
I must just mention that such views are foreign to Merz. On principle Merz works for art alone,
because no man can serve two masters. However, “the Dadaists’ conception of Dadaism is very
varied”, as Huelsenbeck himself admits. Thus Tzara, the leader of the Core Dadaists, writes in the
Manifesto Dada 1918: “Every artist produces his own work in his own way,” and further: “Dada is
the trade mark of Abstract Art.” I should mention that Merz is linked by close ties of friendship to
this form of Core-Dadaism and to the art of the Core-Dadaists Hans Arp – whom I particularly love
– Picabia, Ribémont-Dessaignes and Archipenko. Shell-Dada, in Huelsenbeck’s own words, “has
made into God’s buffoon.” Whereas Core-Dadaism clings to the good old traditions of abstract
art. Shell-Dada “foresees its own end and laughs at it”, while Core-Dadaism will live as long
as art itself. Merz, too, aspires to art and is against kitsch, even deliberate kitsch on principle,
even where under Huelsenbeck’s leadership it calls itself Dadaism. Not just anybody, lacking any
discrimination in Art, may write about art: “quod licet jovi non licet bovi”. Merz fundamentally and
vigorously rejects the inconsequential and dilettantish views on art of Herr Richard Huelsenbeck,
while giving official recognition to the above-mentioned views of Tristan Tzara.
At this point I must clear up a misunderstanding, which could arise through my friendship with
certain Core Dadaists. One might think that I consider myself a Dadaist, especially as the jacket
of my book of poems Anna Blume, published by Paul Steegemann, mentions the word “dada”.
Drawings on the same cover show a windmill, a head, a locomotive going backwards, and a man
suspended in the air. All that means is that in the world inhabited by Anna Blume, where people
stand on their heads, windmills turn and steam engines go backwards, that also exists. To avoid
being misunderstood, I have put the word “Antidada” on the cover of my Cathedral. That does not
mean that I am against Dadaism, but that in the world there is also a counter current to Dadaism.
Engines may drive from the front or the rear. Why should an engine not go backwards for once?
I have sculpted as long as I have painted. At present l am doing Merz sculptures: a fun gallows
and a cult pump. Merz sculptures, like Merz pictures, are assembled out of a variety of materials.
They are intended as all-round sculptures and be viewed from any angle.
12

Merz House was my first piece of Merz architecture. Spengemann writes about it in Zweeman
8—10: “I see Merz House as a Cathedral: the Cathedral. Not church architecture - no, a building
as the expression of a truly intellectual view of what elevates us to the eternal: absolute art. This
Cathedral cannot be used. Its interior is so filled with wheels that human beings can find no room
in it... that is pure architecture, whose only purpose is as a work of art.”
Trying out various art forms was an artistic necessity. The reason was not an urge to extend the
range of my activities, but the desire to be, not a specialist in one art form, but an artist. My aim is
the Merz total work of art, uniting all forms of art in one artistic unity. As a start I have assembled
poems out of words and sentences such that the rhythmic–order produces a drawing. Conversely,
I have stuck together paintings and drawings from which sentences can be read. I have nailed
pictures in such a way that in addition to the painted effect there is a three-dimensional effect.
This was done in order to blur the boundaries of the art forms.
MERZ by Kurt Schwitters
13

i
(A MANIFESTO)
Kurt Schwitters (1922)
Any child todays knows what Merz is. But what is? i is the middle vowel
of the alphabet and the sign for Merz’ grasping of artistic form, taken to
its highest degree. Merz makes use of large ready-made complexes to
form a work of art. These materials shorten the distance from intuition to
the realisation of an artistic idea, reducing loss by friction. i reduces this
distance = zero. Idea, material and work of art are one and the same. i
comprehends the work of art in nature. The act of creation means here the
recognition of rhythm and expression in a part of nature. Thus there is no
loss through friction; no distractions can occur during the creative act.
I postulate i, not as the sole art-form, but as a special form. In my exposition
in May 1922 in “Der Sturm” the first i-drawings were shown. For Messieurs
art-critics, I must add that naturally much more skill is required to extract a
work of art from unformed natural material than to put together according
to one’s own artistic principles a work of art from just any material; it needs
only to be formed into a work of art. The material for i is however, not so
easily found, since not every piece of nature is artistically formed. Thus i is
a special form. For once it is necessary to be consistent. Can an art-critic
grasp that?
Der Sturm Volume 13, number 5, 1922
14

15
Kurt Schwitters (ed.), Merz 2. Nummer /i/, Merzverlag, Hanover April 1923

ANNA BLOSSOM HAS WHEELS
Kurt Schwitters (1942)
O Thou, beloved of my twenty seven senses, I love thine!
Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine. – we?
That belongs (by the side) not here!
Who art Thou, uncounted woman? Thou art – art Thou –
People say, Thou werst, -
Let them say, they don’t know, how the churchtower stands.
You wearest your head on your feet and wanderst on your hands,
On thy hands wanderst Thou.
Hallo thy red dress, clashed in white folds,
Red I love Anna Blossom, red I love Thine!
Thou Thee Thee Thine, I Thine, Thou mine, – we?
That belongs (by the side) in the cold glow.
Red Blossom, red Anna Blossom, how say the people?
Price question:
1. Anna Blossom has wheels.
2. Anna Blossom is red.
3. What colours are the wheels?
Blue is the colour of thy yellow hair.
Red is the whirl of thy green wheels.
Thou simple maiden in everyday-dress,
Thou dear green animal, I love Thine!
Thou Thee Thee Thine, I Thine, Thou mine – we?
That belongs (by the side) in the glow box.
Anna Blossom, Anna, A—N—N—A
I trickle your name.
Thy name drops like soft tallow.
Does thou know it, Anna, does thou already know it?
One can also read thee from behind,
And thou, thou most glorious of all,
Thou art from the back, as from the front:
A—N—N—A
Tallow trickles to strike over my back.
Anna Blossom,
Thou drippes animal,
I – Love – Thine!
16

17
Kurt Schwitters. Anna Blume. Dichtungen (Silbergäule), Paul Steegemann Verlag, Hanover 1919

t
KURT SCHWITTERS
P H O T O A L B U M
Some pages from Schwitters’ family
photo album, photographed and pasted
by Kurt Schwitters
t
18

t
Page from Schwitters’ family album: Kurt Schwitters reciting the Ursonate,
photographed by Ernst Schwitters
19
t

t
20
t

t
21
t

t
22
t

t
23
t

t
24
t

t
25
t

t
26
t

t
27
t

t
28
t

t
29
t

t
30
t

t
31
t

KURT
SCHWITTERS
AS WRITER, POET AND LECTURER
Ernst Schwitters (1958)
32
Kurt Schwitters,
Ernst Schwitters in Lysaker, 1937.
© bpk / Sprengel Museum Hannover /
Kurt Schwitters

Almost all the pioneers of modern art of the
late, nineteen tens, the ‘Great Twenties’, and
the early thirties tried to achieve ‘Universal
Art’. Few only reached such a degree of
versatility as did Kurt Schwitters.
Born June 20th, 1887 in Hannover,
Germany, in the ‘Golden Age’ of business
and bourgeoisie, Kurt Schwitters had a
conventional background and upbringing.
At high school he was a brilliant pupil,
particularly in mathematics! In drawing —
art appreciation did not, as yet, exist in school
terminology — he was not above normal but
he had already made up his mind.
After his matriculation in 1908 he attended
the Arts and Craft School at Hannover for
a year, then studied at the Academy of Art
in Dresden from 1909—1914, with one
intermediate guest-year at the Academy of
Berlin.
His studies were interrupted by World
War One, and — in his own words —
he “gallantly fought on all fronts of the
Waterloo Place”, Hannover’s exercising
ground. He succeeded in making so much
of a fool of himself and everybody else, that,
to the “military mind”, he seemed mildly
“touched”, and was, henceforth, released
from military duty. Instead he was drafted to
draw machines till the end of the war.
Kurt Schwitters hated the war and the false
ideals it fought for. When peace, at last,
came, the revolutionary search for a better
future, for truer ideals, for a strong, functional
culture inspired him immensely, and from the
very start he was in the forefront of cultural
development.
In 1918 he rounded off his interrupted
studies in painting and drawing by a year
of architectural studies at the Technical High
School at Hannover. “How”, he said, “I will
have to ‘unlearn’ and start working!”
Already in 1917 his first abstract pictures
had been painted. 1918 saw the birth of his
later so famous technique of collage, which
he called “MERZ” (and, incidentally, of my
own self.—)
MERZ-collages were stuck, nailed, in
fact built of a large variety of hitherto —
for purposes of creating art — unlikely
bits of refuse, used as splotches of colours,
movement, form, in completely abstract
compositions. “Nothing is too Iowly to be
used as factors in a composition, in fact, age
and signs of wear induce their own patina
of beauty.”
I believe, it is true to say, that my father
saw the great beauty of weariness, tiredness,
ruin, which surrounded him everywhere
after the war, and of the inherent qualities
of these characteristics, to rebuild a better,
sounder more honest culture. Beyond this, no
“symbolism” should be read into his work as
a painter. He created for the sake of beauty.
He made pure compositions.
However, a parallel developed in his
writing, and, particularly during the first,
dadaistic period, there was a great similarity,
as far as concerns the use of apparently and
conventionally useless bits of ‘rubbish’: bits
of advertising, proverbs etc., sentences, cut
into nonsense, all recombined into a new
composition. But — in this dadaistic writing,
there definitely was a deeper meaning,
however ‘nonsensical’ it appeares at first
sight.
As much of it is bound to geographical
localities and to its particular time, it is
33

KURT SCHWITTERS AS WRITER, POET AND LECTURER · by Ernst Schwitters
34
sometimes difficult for ‘outsiders’ to read
sense into the apparent nonsense. But the
general aim of my father’s early dadaistic
writing is, to utterly destruct, by ridiculing
and by subtle sarcasm, the false and hollow
sentiment of decadent bourgeois culture,
thus ‘plowing the ground’, as it were, for the
seeds of a sounder culture. To achieve this,
Kurt Schwitters often used the very same false
sentiments of bourgeoisie, but so interspersed
with hilarious nonsense, that the hollowness
was clearly exposed. Yet, the average
bourgeois was so foxed by this method, that
he simply declared Kurt Schwitters “mad”!
— A wealth of this writing exists. It was
published as books by the Hannovarian
publisher Paul Stegemann, and appeared
in the avantgardistic magazine Der Sturm,
Berlin, as well as in a great variety of similar
cultural magazines throughout Europe, and,
finally, in Kurt Schwitters’ own magazine
MERZ, all in those ‘revolutionary’ years
1918 to approximately 1923.
The poem An Anna Blume (To Eve
Blossom) can safely be said to having
been the most successful and, to date, most
well-known work of this period of Kurt
Schwitters’ literary work. It was the highlight
of my father’s traditional ‘MERZ-evenings’
— lecture- and recital-evenings — at his
home in Hannover, regularly attended by
Hannover’s ‘intelligencia’, and by artists
and art-interested people from all over the
world. Eventually, in 1927, the Süddeutscher
Rundfunk (the southern German Broadcasting
Co.) had my father recite this poem and
his equally famous Sonate in Urlauten in
Frankfurt a/M, and recordings were made
simultaneously. 1
The original recording by my
father, recorded here, starts off the present
l/p record.
An Anna Blume is a conventional
bourgeois love declaration, of course, so
subtly is this done, that it simply exposes
the hollowness, and forces us smile at
our own futility.
During these turbulent years of cultural
development Kurt Schwitters came into
contact with, and eventually collaborated
closely with many of the leading Dadaists as
Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara, Theo van Doesburg,
Raoul Hausmann and others. When a section
of the Dadaists, with Richard Huelsenbeck
in the lead, took a pro-communist political
turn, Kurt Schwitters called a definite stop. In
the famous Manifest Proletkunst (Manifesto
Proletarian Art), signed by Arp, my father,
Cristoph Spengemann and Tzara, these
leading Dadaists clearly state, that art
cannot, by definition, be political.
“If a politician creates art, he is not a
politician any more, but an artist, without
relation to any particular ‘class’. Art is not
created for or by any particular ‘class’. It is
above such matters of moment.” Conversely:
if art has a political tendency, it is not art
any more, but political propaganda! How
the lurid, clear logic of this manifest must
have shocked all those good people, who felt
so secure in their belief, that the Dadaists,
and with them Kurt Schwitters, simply were
“madmen”! And how it shocked into violent
aggressiveness those Dadaists of the time,
who were unable to separate Socialism from
the honest search for a new culture and
cutural expression! —
But the time had come, to end subtle
destruction, and to rebuild instead. In a more

‘constructivist’ period, which, also in Kurt
Schwitters’ collages, painting and sculptures,
extends from about 1923 to about 1928,
he slowly, but with great consequence and
concentration, builds up a totally abstract
‘sound-poem’, the famous Sonate in Urlauten
(Sonate in Primeval Sounds), the second
part of this I/p. The creative spark came in
1921, when, during a lecture tour to Prague,
Kurt Schwitters, for the first time, heard
Raoul Hausmann’s sound-poem fmsbw. He
immediately recognized the potentialities of
this new form of expression, and he recited it
constantly, during his lectures, as “A portrait
of Raoul Hausmann”.
Over the years the Sonata grew, both in
volume and variation, until it had little or no
resemblance to Raoul Hausmann’s original
poem. It was no more a poem, in fact, but
music — spoken by mouth! The original
fmsbw had long since become “fümms
böwötää zääuu — rögiff — kwiiee!”, and
was merely part of one of the many themes
of the Sonata, now. My father’s lively interest
in music helped him a lot, here.
I shall never forget those many ‘MERZevenings’,
where, as a four-, five-, six-yearold,
I used to have my regular place in the
centre of the front-row of seats, directly
opposite my father, marvelling openmouthed
at him. —
It was during these evenings, that the
Sonata grew. It never was read off a
manuscript, although, in its various stages of
development, it had been published in artmagazines
everywhere. But my father knew
it by heart, and preferred to improvise the
recital, as this gave him the chance to develop
it continuously. Thus a great many people
became witnesses of the slow development
of this unique piece of — shall we say —
‘music’ and/ or abstract poetry.
Kurt Schwitters had realised all along,
that a phonetic way of noting down the
Sonata was essential, if it should not die
with him. Ordinary notes, as used for music,
would not do here. With each successive
publication he improved on the form of
notation, and finally, in 1932, the Sonate in
Urlauten was published as his last number of
the MERZ magazine, no. 24. But, although
this is undoubtedly the most phonetic way
of notation to date, it is virtually impossible
to recite it correctly, simply by reading it. A
prime necessity is, that one has heard Kurt
Schwitters recite it as often as possible.
This is the reason why, ‘under pressure
from all sides’, I have finally agreed to try
to recite it as best I can. I am fully aware,
that my recital can, in no way, be compared
with my father’s. But then, I am only reciting,
not creating. I must not improvise! Moreover,
I have a different voice, particularly in
volume! Even though, as a lecturer, l am
quite used to speak concise, and to ‘cover’ a
large audience.
But you try to do it better! — There is, at
least, one point I have in favour of all others:
I have got the Sonate in Urlauten — so to
say — with my ‘mother’s milk’. I have heard
it at least 200—300 times! I have closely
followed it’s development. I have immensely
admired it, as I have admired my father. I
believe, I shall never forget the intonation
and pronunciation of it, as I also would never
be able to forget, how to walk! Anyhow, it is
the best I can do. —
Concurrent with the development of the
35

KURT SCHWITTERS AS WRITER, POET AND LECTURER · by Ernst Schwitters
36

Sonata and after the Dadaists period, Kurt
Schwitters wrote numerous poems of a style,
slightly reminiscent of Morgenstern: rhythmic,
humorous, and sometimes ironical, but always
understanding, positive, friendly. Also his
well-known ‘Grotesques’ developed in these
years: 1923—1933. Some were humorous,
some outright sarcastic, particularly when
they criticised certain unhealthy aspects of
contemporary life and thinking, like militarism,
hero-worship, etc.
A very typical side of his literary work during
this time were his dialectic grotesques. They
usually developed out of some mild irritation
over a very talkative person. The most wellknown
ones are undoubtedly Der Schirm (The
umbrella), Schacko (The name of a pet parrot),
Main näiääs Hutt (My new hat, Hungarian-
German accent. The ‘original’ is Prof. Breuer
of the Bauhaus, a friend of my father’s), Die
Amerikanerin (The American Lady) and the
hilarious Kleines Gedicht für große Stotterer
(A little poem for great stutterers).There is
one thing in common with all these works,
as also with the poems and the Sonata: they
developed slowly, improvised, as they were,
during Kurt Schwitters’ MERZ lectures, and are
very dependant on a correct, but very specific
intonation and pronounciation. Usually,
they were first written down after years of
improvised recitation, when my father felt sure
of the final form. Some were, unfortunately
never written down at all, and only an all too
vague memory of them remains in my ears.
The problem of a phonetic way of noting
down the intonation and pronunciation of
my father’s literary work has baffled him
throughout his life, and, finding no solution,
many later works have, unfortunately, never
appeared in print at all. Fortunately, they exist
as manuscripts in his hand, and, I believe,
l am still able to recite them as close to the
original as is humanly possible. Eventually,
they have to be recorded, at least on tape.
1933 and the advent of Hitler almost
brought the end of Kurt Schwitters’ litterary
work. He could, of course, not any more
publicize anything in Germany. In 1934 his
many earlier, published works were amongst
those, destroyed during the Autodafee. In
January 1937 he finally fled from Germany
and lived and worked in his home in Lysaker,
near Oslo, Norway. But, although he had
lived in Norway for longer and longer
periods every year, since he first visited that
beautiful country in 1929, he never learned
Norwegian so fluently as to be able to write
in Norwegian. Only very few Norwegian
poems exist in manuscript, one of them —
Vamos — (the name of a dog) a wonderful
sound-poem, even for those who do not
understand Norwegian, although the content
of the poem, too, is very touching.
Then the Nazis invaded Norway, too, on
April 9th 1940, and we both left the country
for England. My father spoke English since
his high school days, but, to write poetry or
even prose in a ‘learned’ language is quite a
different thing to speaking it, even relatively
fluently. However, he did write a number of
English poems, which appear concurrently in
a little booklet: published by my authority by
the Gaber Bochus Press.
37
Ernst Schwitters, Photograph of Kurt Schwitters in a boat at the foot of a glacier, 1935
© Tate, London 2015

KURT SCHWITTERS AS WRITER, POET AND LECTURER · by Ernst Schwitters
38

Ernst Schwitters,
Photograph of Kurt Schwitters
painting near Djupvassjytta,
Norway, 1933
© Tate, London 2015
39

WERNER SCHMALENBACH
KURT
S C H W I T T E R S
(1980)
!
40
When Kurt Schwitters died in exile in England early in1948, there were few in
Europe who noted the fact. His name was not prominent in the annals of recent art
history. True, he was not totally forgotten in his home town of Hanover, which at that
time lay in ruins. There were many still alive who had known him, to whom he had been
an experience. But there was little question of mourning ‘a famous son of this town’.
People mainly recalled the former enfant terrible, the many turbulent scenes and highspirited
escapades with which this man had alarmed good citizens of his birthplace.
Only a few were aware that a great artist had died, and no commemorative exhibition –
in Hanover or anywhere else in the world –honoured his memory, which was kept alive
solely in the United States, and even there was restricted to a few small circles.

All this changed at a stroke with the first great Schwitters Exhibition held in the spring
of 1956 by the famous Kestner-Gesellschaft art society in Hanover, once a favourite of
Schwitters himself, and thereafter shown in the public galleries of Amsterdam, Brussels
and Berne. The work of the artist’s whole lifetime, a large part of which had been hidden
away in unopened cases somewhere near Oslo ever since Schwitters’ emigration, for the
first time saw the light of day. The exhibition moved like a triumphal procession through
Europe: the startling revelation of an artist who had been noticed with amusement in his
time, but never regarded as an outstanding figure of modern art. Now Schwitters’ name
was on the map, no longer merely as an artistic clown and scourge of the bourgeoisie
who had presided over his one-man- Dadaism more than 30 years ago in Hanover
(albeit with some reverberations in the rest of Europe), but the name of one of the most
considerable artists of his time.
The time was ripe for him now: otherwise he would hardly have had such a sudden
incendiary effect. In the late Fifties a strong neo-Dadaist element was emerging – a
reaction against Abstract Expressionism – with such artists as Robert Rauschenberg
and Jasper Johns. In France at the same time there was a parallel movement which
called itself “Nouveau Réalisme” and also harked back to Dada. Everywhere collage
and montage were making a comeback, scrap materials were invading the art scene; it
was no longer the ‘law of chance’ that governed the movement of the brush, as with the
Abstract Expressonists, but the choice and juxtaposition of all possible and impossible
everyday objects and waste materials; and new – old – names were appearing in the
artists’ precursors’ gallery: beside the Surrealists, with their cult of the ‘objet trouvé’
and their ideology based on the principle of free association, there were two above all
who are venerated to this day as the fathers – or grandfathers – of recent art: Marcel
Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters.
Duchamp and Schwitters: without those two, both of whom had stopped working
by 1950 – one by a conscious decision, the other through death – no history of art after
1950 could be written.
It was mainly the early, Dada-orientated Schwitters who influenced and entranced the
public and, above all, other artists in that historic atmosphere around 1960: the large-scale
collages of the Twenties – MERZ pictures, as Schwitters called them – with their decayed
ingredients, their flaunted disorder and their secret order, and their expressive intensity,
which was decidedly left over from the Expressionism which Schwitters had briefly breezed
through just before; and also the hundreds of small-sized collages of all kinds of waste paper,
their brilliant play between wilfulness and will, accident and law, form and its dissolution.
With all this Schwitters entered deeply into the consciousness of contemporary artists. Any
mention of Schwitters usually referred to this early ‘classical’ phase of his work.
41!

KURT S C H W I T T E R S · by Werner Schmalenbach
!
42
El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters, 1924
Gelatin silver printphotograph, 11.43 x 10.16cm
© 2016. Christie’s Images, London/Scala, Florence

As the world changed, as the way of looking changed, so did the view of Schwitters’
work – or rather, it expanded. Increasingly Schwitters’ contribution to the Constructivist
Movement of the Twenties began to be appreciated. At the same time it was clear that this
contribution was only valid where it was not a question of pure Constructivism or strictly
geometric art, in other words, where Schwitters could remain himself. To this scintillating,
vividly alive, essentially unorthodox and above all humorous spirit the dogma of the
right angle must have seemed a starvation diet. Schwitters did enter into the Geometric
Abstractions and Constructivism of his Friends – van Doesburg, Lissitzky, Moholy-
Nagy – and adopted the principles of de Stijl and the Bauhaus; but in his best work he
transmuted these into something completely different: montages rather than constructions,
assemblages of raw materials rather than artefacts; a few pieces of driftwood found on the
North Sea shore rather than clean units of construction. The constructive had to embrace
the elements of destruction, decay and accident, nor did Schwitters think it sacrilege to
deviate from the right angle. Thus there were controversial elements, where others clung
to dogma: intuition instead of planned construction, invention rather than gospel. Yet
that too was a contribution to the Constructivist avant-garde of that time. And as neo-
Constructivist trends were surfacing everywhere during the Sixties, naturally enough in
this context, too, Schwitters’ name was retrospectively established.
But what about the later
Schwitters? The one who
gradually grew away from his
homeland, who ultimately,
after spending several months
of every year in Norway, never
returned to Hitler’s Germany
again, but lived out the last few
years of his life - 1940—1948 –
as best he could in England,
cut off both in space and
time from that international
avant-garde with which he
had once felt so completely
at home. This late work, like
the late works of many artists,
tended to be dismissed with a
shrug. The collages might be
accepted, but hardly the larger
works, of which he did many
Ernst Schwitters, Unsere Insel (Island of Hjertøya where
Kurt and Ernst Schwitters lived), undated
43!

KURT S C H W I T T E R S · by Werner Schmalenbach
in England. People deplored that the collages were colourful, less witty, less pointed,
and less appealing to the eye. As for the large assemblages and object-reliefs, they were
felt to lack everything that had given beauty to the early MERZ works. The writer of this
article felt very much the same when arranging the Schwitters Retrospective in Hanover
in 1956, and when writing the long monograph on the artist which was published in
1967. But soon afterwards I had to revise my opinion and realise that the late work was
of equal importance to the earlier.
!
44
Once again this change of opinion coincided with a general change in visual focus,
presumably influenced by new developments in the field of contemporary art. A new
movement was emerging, which, whatever view one might take of it, imperceptibly
modified and transformed vision. Heralded by artistic events of the Fifties – in that
sector of ‘informal art’ where one might place a painter like, say, Antoni Tàpies – a
movement developed which has been termed ‘Arte povera’. Schwitters’ work, with its
preference for ‘moyens pauvres’, fell into this category from the start; but the term
applies more specifically to the late works. There the poverty-stricken materials are
left to their own devices, no longer, as in the early works, aesthetically refined and
transmuted. No enchanting magic of colour is allowed to make its effect now; no assets,
however modest, of colours, tones, harmonies, are brought into play. It no longer seems
the purpose of these works to give the spectator aesthetic pleasure. The works have lost
their musical quality, certainly, but they seem to have gained in humanity. Casualness,
shabbiness, insignificance: all these mark the late works even more than the earlier,
since the qualities are no longer displayed as an amusing stylistic invention, but as the
true expression of the artist’s own life, long devoid of happiness. Where the early collages
mainly have the air of light-hearted studies in a style, the later ones seem an extension
of life itself, without any thought of ‘style’: a life that has lost its glitter and its carefree
attitude. This foreshortening of the distance between art and life, which became so
prevalent in the Sixties and Seventies, probably contributed as much as the rise of ‘Arte
povera’ to the rediscovery and revaluation of the later Schwitters. The early works, with
their great artistic confidence and their seductive charm, were now confronted by the
late work, with its decrepitude, its melancholy, a self-confidence no longer unshaken.
There might still be outrageous new departures and daring innovations, but they were
not supported by the general trend of the time or the former fruitful companionship of
like-minded peers. The whole must be seen against the background of a lonely artist
in exile and a world shaken to its basic foundations. Only in a much later, posthumous
climate of opinion could this work make its full effect: today!
Schwitters, when he first made his mark immediately after the First World War,
had declared that the important thing was to build a new world out of the ruins. That

45!
was exactly what he had done, in the most literal sense: he had picked up the pieces –
discarded objects, litter, rubbish – and had ‘built’ his pictures out of these. Yet he always
maintained that, for all the apparent lack of rules, what mattered to him was form, and
form alone.
‘Form’ was the vital concept for him; and of course that was why, a few years later,
he was able to ally himself to Geometrism and Constructivism. But then, when his world
was shattered for the second time, he could no longer react with gaiety and confidence.
The tenor of his art became one of resignation, the drive of inspiration more laboured.
The pictures, the assemblages, the collages grew more sombre, and, perhaps because of
his own suffering, more humanly touching. Even the large MERZ pictures of the early
Twenties had already been essentially serious: there was a lifelong constant of seriousness
in Schwitters’ art. Conversely, the constant element of playfulness persisted, in spite of
everything, to the very end of his life. He himself said it, after all, with resignation: “We
play until Death comes for us.”
Schwitters’ art until around 1930 was
in the highest degree a contemporary, and
contemporarily aware, art. It was supremely
up-to-date, both in its Dadaist and then in
its (more or less) Constructivist phase. Such
contemporary relevance in youth may be
essential to, but can never be a guarantee
of, survival. In this appreciation, written
more than 30 years after Schwitters’ death,
the survival, the posthumous influence
of Schwitters’ work, has been linked
with ‘contemporary’ trends: with Neo-
Dadaism, Neo-Constructivism and Arte
povera. Beyond its works in its own time,
it has once more been linked with an era.
However, it is important to recognise that
Kurt Schwitters was one of those artists
who transcend historical interest and
survive beyond their own time through
sheer intrinsic quality.
Dr Elmer Belt,
Photograph of Kurt Schwitters in Norway, 1939
© Tate, London 2015

t
46
INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE
AND WORK OF
KURT
SCHWITTERS
SIEGFRIED GOHR (2016)
Kurt Schwitters, Photograph of Kurt und Ernst Schwitters, ca. 1919
© bpk / Sprengel Museum Hannover / Michael Herling / Aline Gwose

47
t

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE AND WORK OF KURT SCHWITTERS · by Siegfried Gohr
t
48
•
When the Dada movement arose in Zurich, Berlin and Cologne in 1916,
Kurt Schwitters was still a member of the avant-garde. After a traditional training
in painting in Dresden he had returned to his hometown of Hanover. Within this
context his work enjoyed a certain recognition, but the First World War broke out
and, despite his epilepsy, Schwitters was conscripted in 1917 as a draughtsman.
Already during his Dresden period he had a relationship with Helma Fischer, whom
he married in 1915. In 1918 their son, Ernst, was born.
•
After his initial experience with modern art in Hanover, it was only through
Herwarth Walden’s gallery, Der Sturm, in Berlin that he made the decisive contact
with the avant-garde. There, after the war, Schwitters saw works by Marc Chagall,
Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee. Walden had a feel for the talents
of the young man from Hanover who painted in an idiom of expressionism, futurism
and cubism. Schwitters remained in Hanover at Waldhausenstr. 5, where his family
lived under the same roof with his parents. In the years 1918/19, Schwitters broke
with his previous styles and began to glue and assemble collages and material
images. The first Merzbild came about, which contained the meaningless fragment
of a word, MERZ, that was cut out from the company name, COMMERZBANK. The
world war had resulted in Germany as the loser which, however, also opened up
new opportunities, because the Kaiser had fled to the Netherlands. However, the
post-war period also brought with it upheaval, revolution, violence and insecurity
in every respect. Schwitters felt the situation for himself as liberating. The war’s end
coincided with the discovery of his own path. He flung himself into activities of all
kinds: artist, advertising graphic artist, lecturer, poet, writer, organizer, publisher.
•
Whereas after the First World War, Dada artists moved toward Surrealism,
Schwitters remained true to his own Merz cosmos. “Merz and Dada are related
to each other through opposition,” he wrote. Nevertheless he was constantly put
into a relation with Dada, although he did not want to belong to either this or any
other group of artists. He had a particular dislike for the politically oriented Berlin
Dadaism under the self-proclaimed leadership of Richard Huelsenbeck. Despite the
differences, it nevertheless remains sensible to locate Schwitters’ art in a proximity
to Dada. His personality had a structure suiting Dada before he was able to get to
know Dada at all; he was a Dadaist by nature.
•
To establish his artistic cosmos, Schwitters employed two innovations that had
become significant in the cubism of Picasso and Georges Braque: the collage and

49
t
Kurt Schwitters,
Hanover 1927
the material image. What came about through his hands, however, was far removed
from Parisian works because Schwitters’ preferred material was waste consisting
of scraps of paper that he collected somewhere or other, and bits of objects he
found. He carefully cleaned both, preserving the material in his sheer inexhaustible
store until the right opportunity came along. Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris, among
many others, used much more ‘noble’ materials for their collages. Mostly they
came from the world of the café. Newspaper headlines, names of drinks, concert
announcements and similar crop up, that is, fragments from the close milieu of Parisian
bohemian life. Particularly Picasso found many a witty constellation, e.g. allusions
to the fairer sex with double entendre, but political, social or historical elements are
lacking. The cubists remained strongly committed to their abstract, stylistic research.
By comparison, Schwitters’ collages possess a downright realistic character. The
natural Dadaist element resided in Schwitters’ method of combining everything with
everything, of admitting and balancing opposites. Something banal could become
the most significant element, and conversely. Merz took in each and every thing,
ultimately, perhaps the entire world. What found its way into his compositions was
‘revalued’ by Schwitters, i.e. it partially lost its identity and became part of an artistic
composition. Merz was a ferment that could permeate anything at all: advertising,
the theatrical stage, a fantastic architecture such as the Merzbau, or literature.
•
In 1919 the publishing house of Paul Steegemann in Hanover published Anna
Blume, in which the most famous poem by Schwitters appeared for the first time. Next

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE AND WORK OF KURT SCHWITTERS · by Siegfried Gohr
t
50
to the artist, the poet and man of letters, Schwitters, stepped onto the public stage.
The echo was mixed, as was to be expected at the time. Despite the lifelong negative,
hostile and deprecatory reactions to his art, Schwitters did not allow himself to be
deterred, insisting on his Merz method, apparently unshaken. During the 1920s,
despite all resistance, he became well-known and admired, but was also ridiculed and
insulted. The acme of his activities was the ‘Dada campaign’ through the Netherlands
in 1922/23. His restless activity led Schwitters to found the Merz publishing house.
He published literary works such as Auguste Bolte elsewhere. A total of 21 Merz
periodicals appeared in his publishing house between 1923 and 1932, when the
Ursonate appeared in Jan Tschichold’s typography. Schwitters earned his living also as
an advertising graphic artist, e.g. for the Pelikan works in Hanover and the Dammerstock
settlement in Karlsruhe. These works show the temporary influence of Dutch
and Russian constructivism. In the Netherlands in 1917, the association of artists,
De Stijl, had been founded under the theoretical leadership of Theo van Doesburg.
During the 1920s, Schwitters sought contact. Schwitters approached the austere,
sparing art of the Dutch, which comprised also architecture and everyday design. Of
course, he was not at all inclined to bend to any kind of aesthetic dogma; therefore
his ‘constructivism’ remains individual, and he always holds in store surprising turns
and details. Apart from that, Schwitters combined colours very idiosyncratically, far
removed from colleagues such as Piet Mondrian or Bart van der Leck. Apart from
trips, lectures, correspondence, contacts, there remained in the background as a
constant his work on the Merzbau, whose initial traces lead back to the year 1923;
a ‘column’ had arisen. Ultimately, the architecture, the grottoes, the concentrations
of material proliferated throughout the house at Waldhausenstr. 5 so that in the end,
eight rooms and even a platform for sunbathing on the roof had come about. In
1943, the building, including the Merzbau, was destroyed by an incendiary bomb.
Three further Merzbau which Schwitters erected during exile in Norway and Britain
were destroyed or have decayed. Of the centre of what he viewed as his life’s work,
tragically, apart from a few fragments, nothing has remained.
•
Although Schwitters had had several stays in Norway starting in 1929, he did
not consider emigrating. However, when he received news in 1939 that the Gestapo
was looking for him, it became inconceivable for him to return to Hanover. After Hitler’s
takeover of power in 1933, the avant-garde in Germany had a difficult time. All
the compulsory measures taken against modern artists and their works reached
their crescendo with the project, Degenerate Art, which resulted in the defamatory
Kurt Merz Schwitters, Auguste Bolte, Verlag Der Sturm, Berlin 1923

51
t

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE AND WORK OF KURT SCHWITTERS · by Siegfried Gohr
t
52
exhibition in 1937 at the Haus der deutschen Kunst (House of German Art) in Munich
that subsequently toured throughout Germany. Schwitters soon became aware that
his career in Germany was at an end. Already before he finally went into exile in
Norway in 1937, he had frequently spent time there. Germany and the other countries
of his earlier activities, such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, offered scarcely any
opportunities for having any resonance for his work. Helma Schwitters remained in
Hanover, looking after the house. What had caused consternation among visitors to
his exhibition in Hildesheim already in 1922 — namely, that Schwitters was working
simultaneously both realistically and on Merz — became a vital necessity for him in
order to earn some income. He did some portrait-painting, and offered his landscapes
to tourists in Norway, however, with only moderate success. Realistic work represents
a significant portion of his entire oeuvre which raises it above the status of mere
bread-and-butter work. Orientation in Norway, of course, was difficult, and even
a continuation of his artistic path was unclear. Collages came about continually; in
1938/39 Schwitters attempted an abstract style, a mixture of ‘impressionist’ dabs
of colour and flowing forms, but also nourished by recollections of his constructivist
works after 1923. However, he returned to the material image into which organic
found pieces such as algae, mussels, bark, etc. increasingly found their way.
•
Schwitters incorporated everything into his work that defined his life-world.
Although he had nothing to do with traditional historical painting, the history of his
own period was in his work, whether it be in the form of paper snippets, bus tickets,
Kurt Schwitters,
Norway 1933
advertising, place names, wood, plaster, metal, wheels, bits of nature, and a lot more
besides. His Merz periodicals as well were a mirror of the artistic strivings during the
Weimar Republic. Therefore it amounts to a crude misappraisal to contemptuously

53
look down upon the apparent nonsense in his works and poems; it reflects the errings
and confusions of an entire period. The collision of work and reality, however, does
not end negatively, but in a very idiosyncratic, new interpretation of what art could
still be at all under the given historical conditions.
t
•
For three years he lived with constant worries about a work permit and
livelihood. After the German army invaded, he had to flee, which he succeeded in
doing in dramatic circumstances, to Scotland. He boarded the last ship to depart
Norway, the ice-breaker Fritjof Nansen. After various stages he was interred in a
camp on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea from which he was released only in 1941,
once again in exile in a foreign country. Just as little as in Norway were there
any prospects of artistic success and recognition. Initially Schwitters remained in
London where, as previously, he continued to collect the discarded remainders of
civilization, ‘deformulating’ them and transforming them into Merz art. His works no
longer had the constructivist background as in the 1920s, or the affinity to nature as
in Norway. He increasingly selected a large urban iconography. Over everything,
Kurt Schwitters
(looking at a
daisy?), undated
© Tate, London
2015

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE AND WORK OF KURT SCHWITTERS · by Siegfried Gohr
t
54
however, hung anxiety about the war and the aerial attacks. Schwitters therefore
moved to the Lake District where nature received him hospitably. Landscapes and
floral pieces came about besides portraits, collages and material images. Here his
almost romantic inclination toward nature became apparent which hitherto had not
played any decisive role in his oeuvre.
•
The only exhibition that took place in Britain during his lifetime was in 1944.
It included more than 30 new works and, despite an essay by Herbert Read, an
important art historian and critic, there was no sustained resonance. Schwitters the
artist practically had ceased to exist in the public arena since the 1930s. In the
United States there were individual attempts to arouse interest which, however, only
bore fruit after the war. Although his health worsened progressively due to cardiac
asthma, a stroke and eyesight problems that severely impaired his life, Schwitters
created new works. Particularly touching are those works in which autobiographical
motifs are legible. A collage from 1947 bears the title, A Finished Poet. Although the
English romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, is to be seen in a portrait from 1819, the
parallel to Schwitters is obvious. Shelley, too, was forced by English society to leave
the country. He died in Italy. Despite all the demonstrative persistence, Schwitters was
all too aware of his tragic situation. There were phases of despair and depression;
only contacts with the outer world were able to tear him out of the lethargic mood that
continually recurred. Happily, with Edith Thomas, whom he called Wantee, in 1941
he had found a person who lovingly took care of him. He experienced Wantee’s
care as that of an angel whom his wife, Helma, had sent him. When he received
the telegram in 1944 with news that Helma had died of cancer, Schwitters’ past in
Hanover disappeared once and for all.
•
The generation of artists who were reorienting
themselves since the late 1950s took up very
different impulses from Schwitters’ oeuvre, for
post-war abstraction had exhausted itself, and the
gesture of the artist who captured psychic and
physical energies on the canvas had rigidified. The
rediscovery of Dada gained stimuli mainly from New
York where the artist, Robert Motherwell, edited an
anthology in 1951, The Dada Painters and Poets.
Kurt Schwitters, 1940s

55
t
Ernst Schwitters,
Kurt Schwitters,
Norway 1933
•
The book’s fourth chapter is devoted to Schwitters’ Merz art. On the one hand,
the collage was re-established as an art form during the 1950s; on the other, the
relationship between the art work and reality changed not only via this path. The art
was to be short-circuited with the world, an aim which Schwitters had anticipated
with his comprehensive Merz concept. In contrast to Marcel Duchamp, Schwitters
remained a realist throughout his life if by this concept is meant an open, inquisitive
stance toward historical reality. Realism understood primarily as a stance and not
as a style — that was Kurt Schwitters’ cause. Duchamp’s search for the spirit of
art, his irony, his periods of ‘silence’ and his dandyism were on another planet of
modern art that orbited about itself. What the young American artists were able to
take up from Schwitters was not limited to collage technique, for it had been used by
many predecessors. What counted was the relation to the present itself in works that
were apparently eccentric. Schwitters had employed advertising and public-domain
images; he had wandered through his life-world with an open eye and had collected
what seemed suitable to him. Even then he was a realist when he was not painting
realistically, for which reason the apparent contradiction in the blocks of works is
ameliorated. Not the technique, but the attitude was the message.
•
Much too late in life did his artistic work begin to be regarded for what it was:
an epoch-making contribution to modern art, albeit a highly individual one by a loner.

t
56
The consequence of DADA:
To Anna Blume
MERZ
Adrian Notz (2016)
Merz theory:
t t t
Use of all kind of material for artistic work
Playing off these materials against each other
Imperative claim to autonomy for art (pure art) 1
Kurt Schwitters, Die Blume Anna. Die neue Anna Blume. Eine Gedichtsammlung aus den Jahren 1918-1922,
Der Sturm Verlag, Berlin 1923

t
57
t
The beginning of Merz theory can be traced back to the origin of the so-called Merzbild
of 1919, a collage on which Schwitters glued, between abstract shapes, the word MERZ that
he had cut out of an advertisement of the KOMMERZ and PRIVATBANK 2 . This is where
Schwitters came upon the word Merz. At the beginning of the evolution of Merz as a theory,
though, there is a woman: Anna Blume. It
is her who stimulates Merz and in the first
Merzgedicht (Merzpoem), she stands at
the beginning of an evolution. The great
yearning and wonderfully playful, tender
declaration of love, that the “I” in An
Anna Blume (To Anna Blume) professes,
is already dissolved a few pages later in
the 8 th Merzgedicht, in an execution of
oneself. One realizes that Anna Blume
will never be reached, as she merely is
an illusion, a creation that stems from
the longing imagination of the “I”. This
realization, that a fictitious entity is able to
create a real yearning, triggers an equally
real self-dissolution, which finds its poetic
expression in the 8 th Merzgedicht with
its trivial title Die Zwiebel (The Onion):
“It was a very momentous day, the day
on which I was to be slaughtered.” 3 This
“I” is being killed and slaughtered in Die
Zwiebel, and describes all incidents as an
observer of his own slaughter, but from
a subjective point of view. It reaches a
point where the king – a princess makes
an appearance as well, she even sings
Kurt Schwitters’ workers’ song 4 – drinks
from the blood of the slaughtered, which
turns out to be corrosive to an extent as
it poisons and eventually kills him. After that, the slaughtered is being put back together, the
blood infused, the inner organs placed in his body and finally the split skull is being closed up
The consequence of DADÁ MERZ · by Adrian Notz
Kurt Schwitters, Memoiren Anna Blumes in Bleie. Eine leichtfassliche Methode zur Entfernung
des Wahnsinns für Jedermann, Walter Heinrich Verlag, Freiburg (Baden) 1922
1
MERZ 20: Kurt Schwitters catalogue, 1927
2
Ibid. p. 99
3
Die Zwiebel, ibid., p. 16
4
Cf. Ibid., p. 19, also published in Sturm Bilderbücher, IV, Kurt Schwitters, Berlin 1920, p. 4

t
58
again, so that he can be brought back to life. The princess begs the formerly slaughtered for
help in order to bring the king back to life, but he decides the king stay dead. He kills the king
by means of his own slaughter; not only does he leave him lying dead, but he also orders that
two yellow candles be inserted in the holes in the king’s gut and that they be lit, whereupon the
king – given the corrosive blood of the slaughtered – explodes. “The people called out a rousing
hip-hip-hurray on my behalf” 5 .
Following the torn king, Schwitters continues the scent of death in Das Verwesungswesen
(The Nature of Decay) 6 and he refers to Anna Blume directly: “Trumpet climb Anna Blume
elephant.” “You. – I cannot withhold the great walk from you either” 7 . After slaughtering himself
and murdering the king, Schwitters turns towards Anna Blume and covers her with the scent
of death by pointing out that Anna Blume and Arnold Böcklin have the same initials, creating
an immediate memento mori of Arnold Böcklin. Thus, in the Merzgedicht 9, Anna Blume’s
execution is demanded 8 . Schwitters does not execute her himself, but lets her die poetically, as
“Die Hinrichtung” (The Execution) ends with: “Poor legs lower bodies. Anna Blume greens the
withering.” 9
Regicide Schwitters soars from this low point, this withered, upsetting situation, and
launches the Merzbühne (Merzstage). After the bitter loss of the love of his life and of himself,
the Merzbühne now serves as a radiant, defying Bachelor Machine, and which he leans upon in
a combative way and full of a visionary zest of action, calling all stages of the world in order to
enforce the Merzbühne. 10
MERZBÜHNE
What Merzbühne demands is “the general equality of all materials, equality between perfect
human, idiot, whistling wire gauze and idea pump”. The claim for equality of all materials
culminates in the proposition that anything can be used for Merz. People even transform into
Merz and begin to speak in reasonable sentences. While Schwitters sticks to more specific
materials and describes how these become Merz or are merzed, he merges the standardization
of interior design and the formation of time using a human being as material. He already
anticipates a Merzgesamtkunstwerk (total synthesis of Merz art) that we cannot create, but
which arises without the help of an author or individual. Merzgesamtkunstwerk is bigger than
man, it affects the whole. Merzgesamtkunstwerk becomes a materialized idea, almost as if the
material got out of control in all its dimensions and was formed by Merz.
Schwitters started Merz in a very promising way. With Merz in his pocket, he discovers Anna
5
Die Zwiebel, ibid., pp. 26-276 Das Verwesungswesen, ibid., p. 27
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid., p. 28
9
Ibid., p. 28
10
“AN ALLE BÜHNEN DER WELT”, ibid., pp. 31-35

59 t
t
Blume and wants to love and unite Merz with Anna Blume. After the loss and reconstruction of
his self and the mourning over the withered Anna Blume, he needs a new location for Merz: the
stage. Thus, he can use acting in order to hide his loss and to stage himself as a big Zampano.
He claims another, a new stage, as the conventional stages of the world are unsuitable for
Schwitters: too small, too rigid. Schwitters claims a stage that allows for the Gesamtkunstwerk
to be achieved. On and with Merzbühne, everything becomes material, even people and also
Schwitters. The transition he has gone through with Anna Blume and his slaughter turned him
to artistic material of Merz.
With Anna Blume, Schwitters makes a poetically fictitious link, similar to many great
thinkers, artists and poets who take compensation as a stimulus for their work, i.e. the
compensation for the loss of a woman. They try to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, to launch an
ultimate artistic gesture with the help of yearning as obsessive motor.
MEASURING AND ADJUSTING
Anna Blume Dichtungen (Anna Blume Poetries) contains the core idea and all essential
elements of Merz. Schwitters discovers Merz in the Merzbild and, with Anna Blume, contributes
to its expression and form. Anna Blume is a thought and an intellectual fact come to life, whose
consequence and logic Schwitters now pursues. After this initial experience, Schwitters climbs
Mount Ararat, the mountain situated in the east of Turkey where Noah’s Arch supposedly had
stranded, with Merz and publishes a text holding six pages in Der Ararat – Glossen/Skizzen
und Notizen zur Neuen Kunst (2 nd year, no. 1. 1921) (The Ararat – Commentaries/Sketches and
Notes on New Art). In this text, he first explains thoroughly the meaning of academic art. 11 The
very detailed paragraph, which gives a very exhaustive and pedagogical account of the process
as well as optimization possibilities of painting after nature, ends with: “This is academy!” 12
He goes on to explain why this long and boring paragraph is necessary: “[…] to show that
it is a labor of patience, that it can be learned, that it rests essentially on measurement and
adjusting and provides no food for artistic creation.” 13 However, Schwitters also gains knowledge
from the academic process, i.e. that measuring and adjusting visual objects with one another
is the purpose of art. 14 Measuring and adjusting is a core element of the Merz idea. Schwitters
often talks about playing off materials against each other. This reflection about the exact artistic
process and about what art could be leads him to yet another realization: “Even striving for
expression in a piece of art seems to be injurious for art. Art is a primordial concept, exalted
like the godhead, inexplicable as life, indefinable and without purpose.” 15
The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz
11
Ibid., p. 3
12
Ibid., p. 4
13
Ibid., p. 4
14
Ibid., p. 4
15
Ibid., p. 5

t
60
Schwitters painted pictures in accordance with his impressions (of nature) which gave
them an expression. The so-called artistic expression is the transmission of a merely subjective
impression. The artists of that period who were devoted to ‘New Art’, such as Schwitters’ friend
Jean Arp, however, aimed at producing art preferably without subjective or personal expression.
For art exists without the artist, it exists as primordial concept. Schwitters consistently progresses
with this approach and not only does he declare himself unessential, but also the material which
is used to create art. What is essential, however, is the artistic and formative process, which, in
accordance with Merz theory, he finds in the measuring and adjusting of different materials. 16
ARTISTIC LOGIC
One year later, Schwitters publishes the “Tran No. 22” in Der Sturm (13. Jahr, no. 5,
1922). “Tran” is a collection of Merzpoems, published as a direct and personal answer to
critics of his artistic work from 1919 to 1924 that had appeared in various magazines. Tran No.
22 titled Tragödie (tragedy), an answer to the critique written by Dr. phil. et med. Weygandt,
contains insertions and advertising slogans that also advertise Merz. One of them – “Klebekraft
(Adhesive force) protected by law, in powdered form, can glue leather, cloth, cardboard, etc.;
1st quality; (very ropy) abundant.” – Schwitters merzes him in his critique: “If phil. is referring
to art history, then Mister Weygandt disarmed himself with this academic title. Adhesive force,
very ropy, these terms do not apply to the art historian.” 17 The art historian could be seen as
rather dull or reserved, unable to connect people with his analyses and words and, hence, has
to rely on the authority of his academic titles in order to attract the demure attention of the
reader. He seems to succeed, although the critic adorns himself with labels, which he can only
live up to with deception, but not with the actual discipline, the subject he pretends to write
about: “You trust in the belief in authority among the German people and you write a seemingly
scientific article for the people, but not for science.” 18 Schwitters comes to this conclusion not
only because he has more knowledge of art theory, but also because he assumes that the art
historian uses the wrong system, the wrong logic for his interpretation of art. Thus, Schwitters
puts the essential issue of esthetic theory and art theory in a nutshell. The critic applies a
‘mind driven logic’ to the interpretation of pieces of art. He tries to understand the piece, to
examine its comprehensibility, as if the work of art were trying to tell us something that could
be justified with rational logic. The mind, however, is one means to experience and form the
world. Schwitters contrasts mind driven logic with artistic logic. A piece of art, art itself, follows
the artistic logic. Critics and art scholars search for the ‘meaning’ of an artist’s work and wish
16
Ibid., p. 4
17
“Tran No. 22”, ibid., p. 74
18
Ibid., p. 77

t
The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz
61
t
Kurt Schwitters, Merz 21. Eine kleine Sammlung von Merz-Dichtungen aller Art. Erstes Veilchen Heft, Merzverlag, Hanover 1931

t
62
to explain the art to the viewer, who, apparently, is unable to look and see just as well. They
try to classify the piece of art in art history through their critique and their analysis and
behave as historians in the history of art. This interfered massively with Schwitters’ point
of view, which is why he poured ‘train oil’ over the critics. History was not supposed to be
miswritten, i.e. written by people who do not really contribute to it. In terms of Merz, which
not only dissolves, but always forms and puts things in order, too, Schwitters demonstrates
in his own way of writing how one can talk and write about art, i.e. with the poetic artistic
logic of Merz. When it comes to the understanding of his art, Schwitters awards their own
intelligence and quick-wittedness to the viewers, which shall not be polluted by the critic. It
is only the naive and authentic view on art that makes it possible to perceive art. The mind
makes it difficult to understand art. Art is grasped holistically, not only with the mind, but
also sensuously, emotionally and intuitively. Understanding through one’s mind often comes
last. With artistically driven logic, Schwitters pleads for the emotional, sensuous and intuitive,
and even for the sudden understanding of art. 19
SPECIFIC FORM i
Schwitters applies this understanding of art not only passively to the comprehension and
perception of art, i.e. receptive-esthetically, but also actively, i.e. productive-esthetically, to the
creation of art, to the artist. Tran No. 22 is followed by i (Ein Manifest) (A Manifest) 20 , which
replenishes Merz with the radical specific form i. “In order to shorten the way from intuition
to visualization of the artistic idea as much as possible, so friction will not cause a lot of heat
losses. i equates this way to zero. Idea, material and work of art are identical. i grasps the work
of art in its natural state. I demand i, but not as only form of art, but as specific form.” 21
One is tempted to understand i as a specific form that cannot actually be formed or as a
gesture that cannot be performed, but serves as a vision one aims at. Luckily, Schwitters brings
the art critics back from this abstract or even metaphysical idea to the solid ground of artistic
logic. i means taking something directly from nature and displaying it as work of art. A few years
later, Schwitters sums up i once again in Merz 20, this time with a certain amount of reserve and
finds a simple explanation as to how he designed an i-drawing: “Please let me make this clear,
an i-drawing can be a scrap of paper cut off from a misprinted scrap of paper, which I did not
change afterwards, which is supposed to be composition, clear expression without any blame. 22
19
Ibid., p. 77
20
Ibid., p. 80
21
i (Ein Manifest), ibid., p. 80
22
“Merz drawings and i-drawings”, in Merz 20, Kurt Schwitters catalogue, 1927, p. 102

t
63
t
A radical act, whose radical nature we can hardly grasp today. The formerly radical gestures
by Kurt Schwitters and Marcel Duchamp, who primarily focused on the selection of an object,
a material, or even on an extract of nature as essential part of their artistic act, expanded the
concept of art – canonized up to this point – in such a way that they seem natural today.
i is the direct integration of the living environment into art. i does not only select, but
it claims part of everyday life as art. Of course, this part has to hold its ground, this is the
complexity Schwitters talks about when he says that “it requires a much greater ability to cut
out a piece of art of a non-formed nature than to assemble a piece of art from random material
following one’s own artistic law”. 23 Within this active and passive assertion lies the combination
of intuition, material and piece of art, which is identified with i. The specific i-form separates art
from the piece of art and defines art as an independent entity. “Thus, i is a specific form. But it
is necessary to be consistent for once. Will an art critic be able to comprehend this?” 24
The arising of an i-artwork seems to be as simple as the letter i. Only a lower case letter i, an
“up-down-up and a dot on top”. It arises from itself, just as the Merzgesamtkunstwerk will arise
one day. The creation of an i-artwork might not be impossible as with the Merzgesamtkunstwerk,
but still rather complex and difficult. Hence, i is just a specific form, a “décadence” 25 of the
comprehensive Merz. By “décadence”, Schwitters means that i is just a small example of a Merz
operation. In its simplicity, it is a decay, a downfall of Merz.
Although i is inferior to Merz, it has a transhistorical dimension with regard to human
action. In Merz 7 in 1924, Schwitters describes i as an original process of man, which had
always been practiced, and therefore, he encourages the use of i until today, so it be practiced in
urban life, just as it had been striven for in ancient cultures of all times. He uses the décadence
of Merz 2 to introduce i into everyday life, in order to turn one’s modest and humble attention
also on the insignificant. 26 With i, Schwitters attempts to introduce an equality of things, “even
more so, as the overall artistic impact only results from the comparison of the insignificant with
the significant.” 27 In this equality, the highest goal is unity, which we attain through decision
and selection, that is through i. 28
THE ARTIST OF i
Although art-historical writings like to tie Merz to Schwitters, it is, if we take Schwitters
seriously, a principle that isn’t tied to him but available to anyone who wishes to configurate and
The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz
23
“i (Ein Manifest)”, in Der Sturm, 13. Jahr, no 5, 1922, p. 80
24
Ibid., p. 80
25
“i”, in MERZ 2: Nummer i, no 2, 1923, p. 21
26
Ibid., p. 66
27
Ibid., p. 66
28
Ibid., p. 66

t
64
Kurt Schwitters (ed.), Merz 1. Holland DADA, Kurt Schwitters, Hanover 1923

tt65
The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz
Kurt Schwitters, Die Kathedrale: 8 Lithos von Kurt Schwitters (Silbergäule), Paul Steegemann Verlag, Hanover 1920

t
66
work with it. Merz is to be understood as power, as an energy that everyone should make use
of in order to free himself or herself and make art. “Merz stands for the freedom of all fetters,
for the sake of artistic creation. Freedom is not lack of restraint, but the product of strict artistic
discipline. Merz also means tolerance towards any artistically motivated limitation.” 29 With this
definition of Merz, Schwitters enters in a metaphysical zone of freedom and tolerance, while
pointing out that freedom can only be achieved through outmost artistic discipline. The work
of art might be separated from personal expression, however the artist and thus the author Kurt
Schwitters remain nonetheless important. The artist functions as a mediator vis-à-vis art, as
an almost magical transformer who makes something art through his own recognition: “What
is important for i is that it is not something for me, but through me, albeit the others made it,
through my recognition, through me branding it as a work of art, through my recognition.” 30
Not only is the artistic act a selection, but also recognition and claim. With his claim, the artist
makes something art and remains present as auctorial subject: “I am the artist of i” 31 . Schwitters
printed this sentence in Merz 2 in large letters in order to give them more weight. He refutes
the danger that through this supposedly simple act, everyone can become an artist—which we
already see in the simple act of “grasping from nature”—using a quote by Alois Schenzinger.
“Only the beholder makes a work of art a work of art.” 32 Picking up the notion of artistic logic
visible in a work of art from Tran No. 22, we can sharpen this point further. Schwitters states
that one is supposed to see the artistic logic in a work of art, something which even the simple
man can do. However only the artist is capable of seeing this artistic logic in nature since they
have practice in artistic discipline. The beholder of the environment must be an artist in order
to be capable of recognizing art in it. 33 By the means of i, the artist communicates art to the
beholder in an unmediated way. 34
STYLE OF OUR TIME
After Schwitters had initiated the Merzidee with Anna Blume, based on his first Merzbild
in 1919, it was published in different publications and shared in the form of Merz- and i-poems
and drawings, he presented his own platform for Merz in 1923, the Merz Heft (Merz magazine),
issued four times a year. The first issue, entitled MERZ 1: Holland Dada, introduces the new
magazine and deals with Dadaism in the Netherlands. 35
Interestingly, Schwitters uses Dada to further sharpen the Merzidee despite entertaining critical
or even hostile sentiments towards Dada. In Ararat, he distinguishes “Kern- und Huelsendada”
29
Ibid., p. 5
30
“i”, in MERZ 2: Nummer i, no. 2, 1923, p. 17
31
Ibid., p. 17
32
Ibid., p. 18
33
Ibid., p. 18
34
Ibid., p. 19
35
MERZ 1: Holland Dada, no. 1 (1923), Hanover, p. 1

67 tt
(core Dada and Huelsendada). 36 Huelsendada is, of course, a direct allusion to Richard
Huelsenbeck, who, in his function as chairman of the ‘Zentralrat des Deutschen Dadismus’, had
rejected Schwitters’ application to join the Club Dada, although the other Zentralrat members
such as Raoul Hausmann were not opposed to Schwitters joining. This is Schwitters’ retaliation.
He describes Huelsendada as an empty hull which is no longer art, but a politically-oriented
version that only makes noise. Schwitters, naturally, sees himself closer to core Dada and
maintains a close artistic friendship with its artists. 37
The inclusion of Dada in the definition of Merz needs to be understood in direct relation
to the Merzidee, with Merz being first and foremost a uniting and structuring principle. Thus
Schwitters connects Merz with Dada and establishes a very clear relationship between the two,
being, by the way, the author of one of the best paintings of Dadaism. Among the Dada artists,
only Hugo Ball remains on a par with him in terms of understanding and executing Dada in
such an illuminating manner. While Hugo Ball represents the beginning of Dada and took notes
of his anticipations of Dada’s first mythical steps, Schwitters stands on its other end and extracts
in retrospect the essence of the Dada movement. They resemble each other as they were located
on the edge of Dada: Hugo Ball brought Dada to life and Kurt Schwitters elevated Dada to the
next level: Merz.
Immediately following Dada’s burial, brought about by Tristan Tzara in September of
1922 in Weimar, Schwitters leaves for the Netherlands to introduce Dada there, together with
Theo van Doesburg and Petro van Doesburg, Nelly van Doesburg’s pseudonym in the Dada
circle. Between January 10 and February 14, 1923, they organized eight Dada soirées and
Dada matinées in different places in the West of the Netherlands, in cities such as Amsterdam,
Haarlem or Leiden. The first Merzheft feeds on the enthusiasm triggered by the adventures
they lived in the Netherlands. The adrenaline released there is more than apparent in the first
Merzheft, which was published as early as Fall 1923, according to the date on its cover.
In the first sentences about the Dada experience in the Netherlands, Schwitters points out
that Dada had spread in an impressive triumph in the Netherlands. The audience immediately
embraced Dada and started to scream, whisper, sing, cry and rant. Schwitters is surprised how
fast the Dutch audience showed support for Dada. At the same time, he distances himself in
a self-ironic and critical way from this global success, calling the Doesburgs and himself the
Dadaistic house chapel. 38 They had awakened the sleeping Dadaism of the masses 39 and he
finds that the era of the present is Dada, nothing but Dada. He speaks of a Dadaneuzeit (Dada
The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz
36
“Merz”, in Der Ararat – Glossen/Skizzen und Notizen zur Neuen Kunst, 2. Jahr, no. 1, 1921, p. 5
37
Ibid., p. 6
38
MERZ 1: Holland Dada, no.1 (1923), Hanover, p. 3
39
Ibid., p. 4

68
Kurt Schwitters (ed.), Merz 4. Banalitäten, Merzverlag, Hanover 1923
t

t
69
t
Modern Age), succeeding the classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the
Biedermeier period. 40
Thus he comes to the conclusion that Dada is the style of our time, which is in fact lacking
style. 41 In other words: Dada is just as nonsensical as the times we live in are insane. In the
Netherlands, Schwitters and the Doesburgs went through a shock therapy, since they held a
mirror up to the time that is Dada, as if they wanted to fight fire with fire, in order to achieve a
style 42 ; they did it out of love for the style. 43
The audience they encountered in the Netherlands offered resistance against their actions
and events. There was a dissonance between the Dada they presented to the audience and the
Dada the public embraced and called for. The audience saw Dada as shenanigans, as something
absurdly funny, while they were fighting for the style on the stage and took Dada seriously. They
committed to the serious mission of making the world a better place with Dada and introducing
style into the times they lived in. Enthusiastic but ignorant, the audience’s resistance was
encouragement to continue Dada’s advancement and to throw it into their faces. It is comforting
to know that even back then, they had to struggle with that dilemma and be faced, as it happens
in all times, with a seemingly sophisticated civilized man who recognizes how stupid he can be,
and how stupid he is at the bottom of his soul. For Schwitters, the stupidity displayed by the
audience was an enormous success, as for once, the civilized man might realize that his grand
culture wasn’t as grand as it looked. 44 To come to this conclusion, the audience first needs the
ability to develop self-awareness.
DELIBERATE NON-ART
In Merz 4, Schwitters publishes four texts entitled Banalitäten (banalities). In the first two
texts, he points out banalities by quoting different Dadaists and writers, among them Goethe
and Schiller. In Banalitäten 3 and Banalitäten 4, he still reflects the Dada Holland tour, though
it is already July 1923. He acknowledges that the activities on the tour were not always of an
artistic nature, for example when they excited and inspired the audience in such a way so that
it would succumb to the transformed Dadaism and calm down again. Their actions were not
artistic, but Dadaistic. In Merz 2, Dadaism was defined as a life movement, Dada as the face of
the time they lived in and the Dadaist as a mirror carrier. 45 The Banalitäten in Merz 4 continued
this train of thought and put Dada in proximity of ordinariness. For banality is the detecting of
an inartistic complex in an inartistic world. Banality is the creation of a Dada work out of the
The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz
40
Ibid., p. 5
41
“dada complet”, ibid., p. 5
42
Ibid., p. 7
43
Ibid., p. 7
44
Ibid., p. 7
45
“Banalitäten 3”, in MERZ 4: Banalitäten, no. 4, p. 40

t
70
inartistic complex through limitation. In this definition, banality resembles the i work of art.
The crucial difference is, however, that banality is “deliberate non-art”, while i is deliberate art.
It is not the i principle the Dadaists commit to, but banality. 46
Banalitäten 3 is contrasted with a dada complet 1, expressing the i aspect that in banalities,
art is involved in a complementary way. Again, these Dada banalities cannot be detected or
created by just anyone either. Only the most skilled artist is able to create Dada, because only
he can assess what art is. In other words, in order to make deliberate non-art, one has to know
what art is. Just as Merz is complementary to Dada, i is complementary to banalities. 47
This realization leads Schwitters to a conclusive relationship between Dada and Merz:
“While Dadaism only points to opposites, Merz resolves them by giving them values within a
work of art. Pure Merz is pure art, pure Dadaism is non-art; in both cases deliberately so.” 48
EASING OF THE TIME
Merz and the so-called Urdada, primeval Dada, which Schwitters calls Dadaism, are
complementary and consequently linked with each other. They contrast with a Dada that
the dumb audience can embrace and create. This incomplete Dada destroys the artistic form
through random succession, meaning that there are only a few truly capable artists who may
create Dadaistic works in a consequent manner. 49 The core Dadaists can be included among
those, while the Huelsendadas belong rather to the category of the dumb masses.
Schwitters’ understanding of Dada grows more and more ambivalent. The categorization
of core Dada and Huelsendada is a provisional periphrasis. Whenever he considers something
as Dada, Schwitters counts himself among the core Dadas. It becomes Dada through him. Just
as an object of nature becomes art, following the i principle. This transformation is Dada, or i,
which leads Schwitters to the conclusion: i = dada. If i = dada, then Dada, core Dada that is, is a
décadence of Merz as well. In this process of the core Dadaists, Schwitters considers a valuable
method of distinction which goes as follows: Dadaists create Dada, which reminds us that the
world is Dada. The world is dadaistically dumb, but has the potential to become art with i and
Dada. When Schwitters says that we live in an ‘i-dada-age’, which the Dadaists, through internal
determination, have transformed into a Dada age, he means that Dada allows for the possibility
of changing the world with art. Dada aims at the easing of time, abandoning its status quo and
rigidity, and remodeling it into a Merzgesamtkunstwerk. 50
46
Ibid., p. 41
47
“dada complet 1”, ibid., p. 41
48
“Banalitäten 3”, ibid., p. 40
49
“dada complet 1”, ibid., p. 41
50
Ibid., p. 43

t
71
t
BATTLE CRY WITH VERVE
Merz 7 features the aggravation of the relationship between Dada and Merz through the
introduction of an accent. This allows Schwitters to untangle the ambivalence of Dada.
At the beginning of the text dada complet 2, Schwitters quotes Merz 4, saying that the consequent
and pure Dadaism is absolute non-art, abstract non-art or abstract anti-art, to be precise. The
notion of abstraction is introduced, and explored, towards the end of dada complet 2. It is through
abstraction, through abstract anti-art that Dada achieves a prophetic dimension of the eternal, of
the future and the transhistorical, a dimension that Schwitters had already attributed to i. 51
A critic, who called Dada a not to be underestimated danger, is the trigger for Schwitters’
genius move. He replied that Dadá made a diagnosis and was a remedy for our heavily ill
generation that should not be underestimated. 52 Schwitters uses Dadá with an accent, which
he had already allegedly introduced on December 30, 1923. The accent now allows for three
possibilities of writing Dada and, accordingly, three meanings that may be attributed to it. There
is now dáda, dada or dadá. Schwitters asks the reader to vary the pronunciation of the three
versions: dáda, dada, dadá. Dáda, with the emphasis on the first syllable, he associates with the
intonation common to Saxony and finds it trivial, almost reminiscent of Swiss German, peasant
and rude, as if a men’s club would pronounce dáda. By contrast, dadá, with emphasis on the
second syllable, sounds French, colored with verve and cosmopolitan urbanism, according to
Schwitters. It rather sounds like a question that remains open and suggests that there is more,
it is playful, saucy and witty. While dáda only encourages a short, blunt nod and slumps down
in dull provincial affirmation, dadá lifts up, making the pointer finger and the eyebrows rise,
making one’s spirit bright and awake. Dada finally, sounds indifferent to Schwitters, it sounds
like somebody who doesn’t know what they want. It is very monotonous, almost automatic,
lacking identification or attitude towards the sound of the word. By using dada, the critics display
the same indifference towards Dada as they do towards art. As a proof for how sound is linked
to meaning, Schwitters talks about the dumb masses of the audience they had encountered in
the Netherlands who had enthusiastically cried dáda, dáda, dáda. The audience is confronted
with the moral gravity of our time and now explodes with laughter, it drunkenly-clumsily snorts
with laughter. On the other hand, the dynamic dadá is the battle cry of the Dadaists. The first
Dadaists in Zurich, inspired by francophone influence, had said dadá as well. Dadá is core
Dadá. It is this Dadá that blends with i and is complementary to Merz. Dadá is the abstract antiart.
Schwitters returns to some phrases from Merz 1 and rewrites them: “Our time is called dáda,
The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz
51
“dada complet 2”, MERZ 7, vol. 2, no. 7, 1924, p. 66
52
Ibid., p. 66

t
72
we live in the age of dada. We experience in the age of dáda, nothing is as characteristic of our
time as dáda. For our culture is dáda.” This means that our time has dully collapsed, expresses
itself only in snorting laughter, and lacks style. Our time lacks vision and attitude. “Dadá is the
commitment to lack of style. Dadá is the style of our time.” Dadá seems to pick up on this time,
to say the same thing, only with a different emphasis. Dadá loosens up the game, rouses, looks
at the things the way they are with verve, intervenes and subsequently opens new dimensions
and adds dynamics into rigid structures. Dadá is the invitation to adopt a Dadá attitude in the
face of the anchorless Dadá time. This is also the conclusion Schwitters reaches, by revisiting
the fear of the critic and explaining why Dadá is dangerous: “dadá is the face of our time, dadá
is the movement that aims at healing the time by providing the diagnosis. This is why dada is a
not to be underestimated danger.” 53
MERZGESAMTKUNSTWERK
It seems as if Schwitters, after he had hit the audience’s nerve of time, also saw the
opportunity to seize this nerve and change the dumb masses. Schwitters believes himself able
to shape the times he lived in with Merz, with the objective of bringing back style. Merz is the
expression of his love for style. Having in mind the dumb civilized man, he affirms that Merz
doesn’t care if there are some who disagree. For Merz and only Merz can transform the world
in its entirety into a giant work of art in a future yet to come. 54
Schwitters has the Merzgesamtkunstwerk constantly on the tip of his tongue: it only needs
to be articulated and leveraged in the right way and at the right moment. But, as it is often the
case with things that we have on the very tip of our tongue, we need to carefully approach them
and encircle them in order for them to take shape.
The Merzbilder (Merz pictures), the art Schwitters makes, are preliminary studies relating
to this transformation and design of the world, as well as to the general style. The Merzbilder
and the means available to him serve as a preparation for his endeavor of remodeling the world
into a work of art. They are futurological research and visionary tests for a time in which style
once again informs our environment. 55
Despite the visionary dimensions of his work, Schwitters remains humble. He links the
Merz theory directly to his actions and suggests that Merz finds its expression not only in
paintings and drawings — in Fine Arts — but also in the other artistic genres such as music,
poetry, dance or theater. With Merz, however, this classification in artistic genres becomes
obsolete, leading Schwitters to conclude that there are no such things as individual arts. They
have been artificially separated from each other, in order for specializations and specialists to
53
Ibid., p. 66
54
MERZ 1: Holland Dada, no. 1 (1923), Hannover, p. 8
55
“dada complet”, in MERZ 1: Holland Dada, no. 1 (1923), Hannover, p. 9

t
73
t
develop. There is only art. 56 Schwitters’ pleading for the fusion of artistic genres is essentially
a peal against the specialists and in favor of authorities: He pleads for clarity and style, for the
universal work of art, not individualization. Only this universal work of art, Merz, is capable
of changing the world. 57 Schwitters demands authorities that focus on the general picture,
individuals with opinions who inspire us and have style. Those instances, he sees them in Merz,
and he establishes Merz as an authority whose task in the world is to erase oppositions and
distribute emphases. 58 As a result, there no longer is a disparate indifference and we no longer
function on crude opposition. We acquire style by transforming and shaping the time we live in,
and by giving it coherence.
MERZARCHITEKTUR
Schwitters is right in consequently expanding his first visionary tests with the Merzbildern
to architecture, since it shapes the environment of the human beings in a more comprehensive
way than fine arts do. The Merzidee can easily be transferred from Merzbildern to architecture.
Schwitters notes that architecture does not consider actual habitability enough. He claims that
architecture is often too abstract and formal and does not consider that individuals change
a room with their presence. The human being is a disruptive element in architecture. This
is where Merz can help, by ‘merzing’ rooms and spaces and adapting them to the human
being as a dynamically erratic being. 59 Merz renders architecture organic and ergonomic. Merz
galvanizes architecture.
The intense relationship between the human being and space that needs to be created can
be achieved by including the human trace into architecture. 60 This means, including the trace
that the individual leaves in the space and the path he walks in the space. The special structure
and dimension of a room and the function it has to fulfill all determine the trace an individual
can create primarily. This trail is included in the execution of the architecture in the way that
walls, niches, grottos and structures are built. The human being needs to be transformed into
architecture’s active user or architecture needs to adapt to the human as a body in movement.
Schwitter’s explorations on architecture evoke the Merzbühne as a place where the inclusion
of the trail is consistent and deliberate and all materials, even individuals, are involved. This
is what Schwitters implies when he describes the mechanical room as the only consequent
room that may be artistically modeled and still would be inhabitable. 61 Another mechanical
room, apart from the Merzbühne, is the Merzbau. The Merzbau finally is the moment when
the visionary tests of the Merzbilder take the space and transform Schwitters’ workshop and
apartment into a mechanical room. It would be wrong to only consider the Merzbau as a self-
The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz
56
Ibid., p. 11
57
Cf. “Merz”, in Der Ararat– Glossen/Skizzen und Notizen zur Neuen Kunst, 2. Jahr, no. 1, 1921, pp. 6-7
58
“dada complet”, in MERZ 1: Holland Dada, no. 1 (1923), Hannover, p. 11
59
Ibid., p. 11
60
Ibid., p. 11
61
Ibid., p. 11

t
74
experiment of the Merzarchitektur’s effects. It is also a first step into the direction that leads to
implementing Merz’s task in the world, which is erasing oppositions and distributing emphases.
SPIRITUAL FUNCTIONS OF MAN
With Merz, Kurt Schwitters creates principles and formats that can guide his work and
operations. He applies them to himself and engages them in s serious play. Although these
principles and formats were created by him and for him, they are universal and should be
embraced by every artist, by every individual. Schwitters’ art does not primarily consist of the
works of art themselves, but in the principles he creates and the ideas he puts into the world.
The works of art are a mirror and expression of this art. This is also revealed in Manifest
Proletkunst that Schwitters wrote along with Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara and
Christoph Sprengemann on March 6, 1923 in The Hague: “Art is a spiritual function of man,
which aims at freeing him from life’s chaos (tragedy)” 62 .
The manifesto aims at the orchestration of art for political ends. It positions art as an
independent, autonomous and resistant system that neither serves the proletariat nor the
bourgeoisie, and is consequently uncoupled from other systems such as politics, economy,
education, media, religion, law, philosophy or science. As proposed later in the foundations of
systems theory, art, as an autonomous system, also has its own rules it is informed by. 63 Art pursues
a goal of its own, a goal that is independent of the classes of men. It disconnects from thought
of class differences and from the political dialectic on the left and the right and aims at setting
free the creative forces in the individual. The goal to achieve is the mature individual, not the
proletarian or the bourgeois. 64
Manifest Proletkunst is a clear rejection of the political appropriation of art and is applicable
to the entire culture, just as Merz is applicable to the entire world. The art that the manifesto’s
authors strive for is strong enough to influence the entirety of culture and is resistant to
influences by social relations. 65 The art that is being manifested and prepared by the authors
is a Gesamtkunstwerk, which is superior to all labels like Dada or Communist Dictatorship. 66
Manifest Proletkunst prepares its secession from Dada, just as Schwitters had predicted in the
first issue of Merz. Supported by some core Dadaists and backed by the understanding of art
proposed in Manifest Proletkunst, Schwitters is able to rise from Dada and declare Merz the
logical continuation of Dada. After the chaos of Dada, Merz is free to re-establish order and
62
“Manifest Proletkunst”, MERZ 2: Nummer i, no. 2, 1923, p. 24
63
Ibid., p. 24
64
Ibid., p. 25
65
Ibid., p. 25
66
Ibid., p. 25

t
75
t
to inspire the Merzgesamtkunstwerk. On the flip side of the Merz 2 cover—in which Manifest
Proletkunst was published—the objectives of the magazine are listed: Dada—Merz—Style. Motive:
World National Feeling.
From the perspective of its relation to Dada, Merz may be understood as follows: Dada
loosens the paralyzed ordinariness of the Dáda era, allowing i to give access to imagination
again, in order to use it and rise with Merz.
Merz is thus the consequence of Dadá, with its oppositions erased and emphases distributed
by the Merzgesamtkunstwerk in order to give style back to our time.
The consequence of DADA: MERZ · by Adrian Notz
Kurt Schwitters, Käte Steinitz, Theo van Doesburg, Die Scheuche. Märchen, Apossverlag, Hanover 1925

76 l
SCHWITTERS:
Tending the
Enchanted Garden
Jonathan Fineberg (2016)
Kurt Schwitters, L Merzbild L 3 (Das Merzbild),
1919 (Lost)

l
In the political and social chaos of Germany after the Great War, in the bewildering onslaught
of sensory input that had come to define modern life, under the psychic assaults of losing a first
born child and a life-long burden of epilepsy, making art was a force against dissolution for the
artist Kurt Schwitters. “In the war, things were in terrible turmoil,” Schwitters recalled. “What
I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready…
Then suddenly the glorious revolution was upon us… I felt myself freed and had to shout my
jubilation out to the world. Out of parsimony I took whatever I found to do this, because we
were now an impoverished country. One can even shout with refuse, and this is what I did,
nailing and gluing it together… New things had to be made out of the fragments.” 1
The Armistice of November 11 th , 1918 ended World War One. The German military forced
Kaiser Wilhelm to abdicate and in January 1919 they held elections which brought the liberal
Social Democrats to power. But it was an uneasy alliance of old and new, accompanied by
ongoing riots, strikes, assassinations, the rise of the Nazi Party, and the hyperinflation which
created economic havoc in Germany throughout the 1920s.
Yet in 1918, the thirty-one year old Kurt Schwitters lived with his well-to-do parents in the
bourgeois and provincial city of Hanover, as he had all his life and would continue to do until
driven out of the country by the fascists in 1936. He had married his cousin Helma Fischer in
1915, had a son who died only days after birth in September 1916, and two years later had a
second son, Ernst, who remained close to his father throughout their lives. Schwitters’ friend
Käte Steinitz described the odd atmosphere of Hanover at that time: “In fact, there was shooting
in the streets of Hanover in those days. Revolutionists tore the golden epaulets from the uniforms
of high officers. But legend has it that through it all the revolutionists scrupulously observed the
civic regulation: ‘Keep off the grass.’ There was a little bloodshed, to be sure. A workman’s and
soldiers government was established, but the lawns, border, and flower beds remained intact.” 2
Steinitz’s warm recollections of Schwitters also portray his affability and his eccentricity.
“One day I saw Kurt’s bicycle leaning up against the wall of a house in an old part of Hanover…
It was then the best guinea-pig shop in town… I entered the shop because I saw Kurt bent over
the counter. He was negotiating a sale to the shopkeeper of one, two, three, four, five guinea
pigs, which he pulled one by one out of his coat pockets. ‘Helma says we have enough guinea
pigs at home,’ he explained to me, ‘and besides Ernst needs Greek and Roman lead soldiers to
play with.’” 3 He took the proceeds down the street to the
toy shop.
Kurt Schwitters launched his artistic career in 1918-
19, pioneering the assemblage of all manner of nonartistic
refuse, mostly gathered from the streets, with
expressionistically handled passages of painting. In
the same way, he composed stories, plays, and poetry in
disjointed collages of words and fragmentary phrases and
even performed abstract vocal works like his 1919 Sonate
in Urlauten (Sonata in Primal Sounds). “New art forms
out of the remains of a former culture,” 4 he said. “I called
my new manner of working from the principle of using any
material MERZ. That is the second syllable of Kommerz
1
Kurt Schwitters, “Kurt Schwitters,” 1930,
in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische Werk, ed.
Friedhelm Lach, volume 5, DuMont, Cologne
1981, p. 335; cited in Dorothea Dietrich,
The Collages of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition
and Innovation, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1993, pp. 6-7.
2
Käte Trauman Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters: A
Portrait from Life, University of California Press,
Berkeley and Los Angeles 1968, p. 25.
3
Ibid., 26.
4
Kurt Schwitters, “Daten aus meinem Leben,”
1926 in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5, DuMont,
Cologne 1981, p. 241; cited in John
Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The Museum of
Modern Art & Thames and Hudson, New York
1985, p. 12.
77
SCHWITTERS: Tending the Enchanted Garden · by Jonathan Fineberg

78 l
[Commerce]. It originated from the Merzbild, a picture in which the word MERZ, cut-out and
glued-on from an advertisement for the KOMMERZ- UND PRIVATBANK could be read in
between abstract forms… ” 5
Construction for Noble Ladies, a ‘Merzbild’ of 1919, exemplifies this first group of Merz
painting-assemblages. He arranged everything in a chaotic vortex of pigment and detritus: He
fastened the tin lid of a paint can against the surface in the lower left and a spoked wheel in
the upper right, next to a funnel with its phallic stem projecting straight out of the composition.
He stuck on the remains of a larger, broken wheel at the center, above a receipt for shipping
a bicycle by train. Two halves of a flattened toy train at the bottom and top of the right edge
reinforce the diagonal thrust of a long wooden slat towards the upper right, and all of this
belongs to a seamless and perfectly balanced totality with the other found objects and abstract
forms in wood and metal, modulated by passages of expressionistic brushstrokes in oil paint.
Just below and to the right of the center, and on its side, he placed an oil portrait of a “noble
lady,” 6 anchoring the Futurist dynamism of the composition.
Kurt Schwitters,
Construction for Noble
Ladies, 1919
Cardboard, wood, metal,
and paint,
102.87 x 83.82cm
Los Angeles (CA),
Los Angeles County
Museum
of Art (LACMA)
Purchased with funds
provided by Mr. and Mrs.
Norton Simon,the Junior
Arts Council, Mr. and Mrs.
Frederick R. Weisman,
Mr.and Mrs. Taft Schreiber,
Hans de Schulthess,
Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Janss,
and Mr. and Mrs. Gifford
Phillips
© 2016. Digital Image
Museum Associates/
LACMA/Art Resource NY/
Scala, Florence

l
Like Kandinsky’s abstractions of the earlier teens, which Schwitters knew well, the swirl
of elements in Construction for Noble Ladies destroys all sense of a ground plane while also
dislocating the recognizable objects and images onto a level, semiotic field of abstraction.
In this construction, each element maintains what
Kandinsky called its “inner sound” 7 , an evocative cloud
of association, utterly divorced from any kind of stable
iconography but nevertheless maintaining an intuited
meaning. The fragments in a Merzbild made physical,
and in that sense real, the non-narrative and yet allusive
character of the recognizable images in Kandinsky’s
abstract paintings. The viewer experiences them as a
subjective epiphany, rather than as a linear reading of
content. “Any given abstract painting…is such an infinite
multitude,” Schwitters wrote, that “no theory will ever
manage to wholly comprehend it.” 8
Although the Berlin Dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck
took an immediate dislike to Schwitters – derisively
writing that “he lived like a lower middle-class Victorian,”
and calling him “the abstract Spitzweg” 9 – the other Dada
artists in Berlin and Zürich welcomed Schwitters. He
collaborated with Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball, developed
lasting relationships with Raoul Hausmann, Hannah
Höch, Hans Arp as well as with the Russian artists El
Lissitzky and Ivan Puni, the Dutch De Stijl founder Theo
Van Doesburg, the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius,
and the Constructivist László Moholy-Nagy. Although
based in Hanover, he thrust himself to the forefront of
the contemporary avant-garde while at the same time
maintaining his connection to the prewar Expressionism
of Der Sturm. Schwitters was never a Dada artist as
Tristan Tzara described it (at the 1922 Weimar Congress
which Schwitters helped organize): “The beginnings of
Dada were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust,” 10
and “There is a great negative work of destruction to
be accomplished. We must sweep and clean.” 11 Nor was
Schwitters a Constructivist, an Expressionist, an abstract
Cubist, or a Futurist. Yet he was all of these at once. His
was an all inclusive aesthetic of everything. 12
Schwitters swept in all the fragmented pieces of
himself and of everything around him to make it all
whole. Alves Baeselstiel, the protagonist in Schwitters’
1919 short story Die Zwiebel [the Onion], narrates his
own dismemberment with objective detachment and then
reassembles himself, righting his parts by his own inner
5
Kurt Schwitters, “Katalog,” 1927, pp.
99-100, in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5,
DuMont, Cologne 1981, pp. 252-3;
cited in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters,
The Museum of Modern Art & Thames and
Hudson, New York 1985, pp. 12-13.
6
A portrait of his wife Helma, according
to Gisela Zankl-Wohltat, “Gedanken zum
Frühwerk von Kurt Schwitters,” in Kurt
Schwitters 1887-1948, exhibition catalog,
Sprengel Museum, Hanover 1986, p.
35. Schwitters claimed that there were
seven portraits in this painting in a Letter
to Margaret Miller, December 11, 1946
[in the archives of the Museum of Modern
Art, New York; cited in John Elderfield, Kurt
Schwitters, The Museum of Modern Art &
Thames and Hudson, New York 1985,
p. 56], although no scholar has firmly
identified any of them. Elderfield reports,
based on Maurice Tuchman’s conversation
with an old friend of Ivan Puni [ibid., p.
61.], that one of the “noble ladies” was
Puni’s wife, Kseniya Boguslavskaya.
7
Kandinsky used the term “innere Klang”
or “inner sound” frequently in this way,
as, for example, in Wassily Kandinsky,
On the Spiritual in Art, in Kenneth Lindsay
and Peter Vergo, Kandinsky: Complete
Writings on Art, G. K. Hall, Boston 1982,
p. 218. The Der Sturm Gallery published
Kandinsky’s book Klänge in 1913 and
Schwitters read these books as well
as Kandinsky’s essays the Blaue Reiter
Almanac.
8
Kurt Schwitters, ”Meine Ansicht zum
Bauhaus-Buch 9,” (April 26, 1927), in
Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische Werk,
ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5, DuMont,
Cologne 1981, p. 256; cited in Isabel
Schulz, “Kurt Schwitters: Color and
Collage,” in Kurt Schwitters: Color and
Collage, ed. Isabel Schulz, The Menil
Collection and Yale University Press,
Houston and New Haven 2011, p. 61.
9
Richard Huelsenbeck, “Dada and
Existentialism,” in Willy Verkauf, ed.,
Dada: Monograph of a Movement, 2 nd
ed., Hastings House, New York 1961,
p. 58.
10
Tristan Tzara, “Conference sur Dada,”
Weimar Congress (1922) translated in
Robert Motherwell, Dada: The Painters and
the Poets, MA: G. K. Hall, Boston 1981,
p. 250.
11
Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto” (1918)
translated in Robert Motherwell, Dada: The
Painters and the Poets, MA: G. K. Hall,
Boston 1981, p. 81.
12
No wonder that his closest friend was
Theo van Doesburg – simultaneously
the founder of De Stijl and, under the
pseudonym “Bonset,” a Dadaist.
79 SCHWITTERS: Tending the Enchanted Garden · by Jonathan Fineberg

80 l
power. “They started to put me back together. First with a delicate jolt my eyes were reinserted
in their sockets,” 13 Baeselstiel tells us. It is a parable for political reversal but also for the
reorganization of the self (as D. W. Winnicott uses the term) 14 in the artistic project of Kurt
Schwitters.
It was Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm magazine that published Schwitters’ Dada poem
An Anna Blume 15 in August 1919, making Schwitters famous overnight. The poem employs
multiple perspectives, fragments of found text, and absurd images to evoke the disarray of the
narrator’s emotional state but also his detachment in the throes of love. Like the objects in his
Merzbild compositions, Schwitters explained that: “In poetry, words and sentences are nothing
but parts… torn from their former context, dissociated and brought into a new artistic context,
they become formal parts of the poem, nothing more.” 16 For this, he may have found precedent
in Symbolist depaysment, the Futurist manifestos, and zaum, the transrational language of the
Russian avant-garde.
Juxtaposing word clusters as formal elements, Schwitters writes, in Die Zwiebel, for
example: “Anna Blume bathed in lilac blue roses shoots barbs blank abed in a Posturpedic
mattress. (Ripe for plucking, inwardly composed.) Partial explanation misses the point. Then
the butcher took a mighty leap backwards.” 17 The disjunctive scattering of images, actions, and
associations creates a sense of detached remove. He also
13
Kurt Schwitters, “The Onion (Merzpoem
8)”, translated by Peter Wortsman,
Cambridge Literary Review I/3, Easter,
Cambridge 2010, pp. 113.
14
See, for example, D. W. Winnicott,
Playing and Reality, Routledge, London
1971.
15
Kurt Schwitters, “An Anna Blume,”
1919, in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 1,
DuMont, Cologne 1973, pp. 58-63.
16
Kurt Schwitters, “Holland Dada,” 1923,
11; in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5,
DuMont, Cologne 1981, p. 134; cited
in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The
Museum of Modern Art & Thames and
Hudson, New York 1985, p. 43. See
also: Kurt Schwitters, “Konsequente
Dichtung (Consistent Poetry),” 1924,
p. 46; in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5,
DuMont, Cologne 1981, p. 191; cited
in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The
Museum of Modern Art & Thames and
Hudson, New York 1985, p. 130.
17
Kurt Schwitters, “Die Zwiebel,” 1919,
in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische Werk,
ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 2, DuMont,
Cologne 1974, pp. 26-7; Kurt Schwitters,
“The Onion (Merzpoem 8)”, translated
by Peter Wortsman, Cambridge Literary
Review I/3, Easter, Cambridge 2010,
pp. 114.
18
Kurt Schwitters, “Katalog,” 1927, pp.
99-100; in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5,
DuMont, Cologne 1981, pp. 252-3;
cited in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters,
The Museum of Modern Art & Thames and
Hudson, New York 1985, pp. 12-13.
achieves this in drawings with rubber stamps of words
like “Drucksache” (printed matter), “Die Redaktion” (the
editorial offices), and “Abteilung: Inserate” (Department:
small ads), evoking the world of business transactions
and bureaucratic offices, as does the word “Merz,” from
Kommerz und Privatbank. 18
Schwitters made collages from found typography, as
well, to create his effect. He constructed one example
from 1920, from some forty-five fragments of cut and torn
paper, juxtaposing three styles of calligraphy, each with
distinct associations – Gothic Germanic Frakturschrift;
modern sans-serif lettering, and the artist’s own illegible
handwriting. The appropriated words and phrases –
such as “Entlastungs” (exoneration), “Reichsgerichts-
Prozesse gegen den Staat” (legal proceedings against the
state), “Die Liste der Beschuldigungen findet” (the list of
accusations is found), and “Kriegsschauplatz” (theater of
war) – even seem to suggest a political theme, but he
deliberately avoided a statement or a coherent point of
view. Instead, these words record arbitrarily layered
impressions, spontaneous associations around a starting
point.
Schwitters composed abstract stage compositions
(Merzbühne) modeled on this structural principle too.
“In contrast to drama or opera, all parts of the Merzbühne

l
81 SCHWITTERS: Tending the Enchanted Garden · by Jonathan Fineberg
Kurt Schwitters, Abteilung: Inserate, 1919
Stamp ink, collage, pencil und color pencil on paper, 31.5 x 24.5 cm
Kunsthaus Zug, Stiftung Sammlung Kamm

82 l
Kurt Schwitters, Ohne Titel (fec.),
1920
Cut-and-pasted printed paper and
pencil on paper on board,
25.1 x 18.2 cm
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Gift of Marlborough-Gerson Gallery
© 2016.Digital image The Museum
of Modern Art, New York/Scala,
Florence
work are inseparably bound together: it cannot be written, read or listened to, it can only be
experienced in the theater,” he explained. “…Only the Merzbühne is distinguished by the
fusion of all factors into a total work of art… ” 19 This dream of the total work of art (the
Gesamtkunstwerk) is a leitmotif of Symbolism from Wagner’s operas to the art nouveau vue
d’ensemble and it unifies all of Schwitters’ disparate artistic experiments.
My aim is the total work of art, which combines all branches of
art into an artistic unit… First, I combined individual categories
of art. I have pasted together poems from words and sentences
so as to produce a rhythmic design. I have on the other hand
pasted up pictures and drawings so that sentences could be read
in them. I have driven nails into pictures so as to produce a
plastic relief apart from the pictorial quality of the paintings. I
did this so as to efface the boundaries between the arts. 20

l
19
Kurt Schwitters, “Merzbühne,” 1919, p.
3, in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische Werk,
ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5, DuMont,
Cologne 1981, p. 42; cited in John
Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The Museum of
Modern Art & Thames and Hudson, New
York 1985, p. 107.
20
Kurt Schwitters, “Merz,” Der Ararat,
1920, pp. 6-7, in Kurt Schwitters, Das
literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach,
volume 5, DuMont, Cologne 1981, p.
79; cited in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters,
The Museum of Modern Art & Thames
and Hudson, New York 1985, p. 44.
Schwitters’ idea of the Merzbühne is
indebted to Kandinsky’s stage composition
Gelbe Klang, published with his theories in
the Blaue Reiter Almanac 1912.
21
Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art,
McGraw Hill, London and New York
1965, p. 152.
22
See: John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters,
The Museum of Modern Art & Thames and
Hudson, New York 1985, p. 160.
23
Kurt Schwitters, “Ich und meine Ziele,”
1930, 116, in Kurt Schwitters, Das
literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach,
volume 5, DuMont, Cologne 1981,
p. 345; cited in John Elderfield, Kurt
Schwitters, The Museum of Modern Art &
Thames and Hudson, New York 1985,
p. 159.
Schwitters came closest to achieving this grand
synthesis in his Merzbau, a perpetually evolving
environment that began around 1923 with a pair of
columnar assemblages in his studio; he called them the
Cathedral of Erotic Misery and the Column of Life. These
grew to encompass the entire room, then several rooms,
with a proliferating warren of little shrines and space
defining architectural structures. As he finished each part,
new additions would swallow it up, in layer upon layer,
with new construction. Sliding doors opened to hidden
grottos, and passages to the interior offered glimpses of the
deeper strata of content, as though the viewer was peering
into a shop window. Caves and tableaux mushroomed in
the relatively formless core of collected debris, souvenirs,
postcards of places, photographs of people, emotionally
charged symbols of fantasies, all freely appropriated and
conglomerated. Gradually, an outer shell enveloped the
expressionist core; this he rigorously constructed in clear
architectural forms of plaster and wood and painted white
with just a few color accents. The core, in turn, receded
further and further into inaccessible private spaces like
Freud’s description of the unconscious. Sometimes
Schwitters even literally plastered over sections with the contents still intact.
“He cut off a lock of my hair and put it in my hole,” Hans Richter reported. “A thick pencil,
filched from Mies van der Rohe’s drawing-board, lay in his cavity. In others’ there were a piece
of a shoelace, a half-smoked cigarette, a nail paring, a piece of tie (Doesburg), a broken pen.” 21
Sophie Taeuber came to stay with Schwitters and awoke to find her bra had disappeared into a
cave dedicated to her; Moholy-Nagy lost his socks. 22 Schwitters himself described The Big Love
Grotto in the style of one of his poems, inserting “live” elements morphed in the retelling from
the inanimate dolls and objects in the construction:
A wide outside stair leads to it, underneath which stands the
female lavatory attendant of life in a long narrow corridor with
scattered camel dung. Two children greet us and step into life;
owing to damage only part of a mother and child remain. Shiny
and broken objects set the mood. In the middle a couple is
embracing: he has no head, she no arms; between his legs he is
holding a huge blank cartridge. The big twisted-around child’s
head with the syphilitic eyes is warning the embracing couple
to be careful. This is disturbing, but there is reassurance in the
little bottle of my own urine in which immortelles [long-lasting
flower arrangements placed on graves] are suspended. 23
83 SCHWITTERS: Tending the Enchanted Garden · by Jonathan Fineberg

84 l
In 1927, the artist Rudolf Jahns entered and “experienced a strange, enrapturing feeling.” 24
Käte Steinitz wrote of her visits: “In each cave was a sediment of impressions and emotions,
with significant literary and symbolic allusions.” 25 Schwitters noted that:
Each grotto takes its character from some principal components.
There is the Nibelungen Hoard with the glittering treasure; the
Kyffhäuser with the stone table; the Goethe Grotto with one of
Goethe’s legs as a relic and a lot of pencils worn down to stubs;
… the Sex-Crime Cavern with an abominably mutilated corpse
of an unfortunate young girl, painted tomato-red, and splendid
votive offerings; the Ruhr district with authentic brown coal
and authentic gas coke; an art exhibition with paintings and
sculptures by Michelangelo and myself being viewed by a dog
on a leash;…the brothel with the 3-legged lady made by Hannah
Höch; and the great Grotto of Love. 26
When Sophie Küppers and El Lissitzky (her future
husband) saw the Merzbau, she said she was “unable
to draw the line between originality and madness.” 27
It positively repulsed the museum director Alexander
Dorner, who otherwise championed Schwitters’ work. He
said the “free expression of the socially uncontrolled self
had here bridged the gap between sanity and madness…
It was a kind of fecal smearing – a sick and sickening
relapse into the social irresponsibility of the infant who
plays with trash and filth.” 28 Thus even a sophisticated
observer like Dorner, found the autobiographical,
sexual, and sadistic content of the Merzbau shockingly
transgressive, still more so for being hidden beneath
and contrasted with the geometric, Constructivist purity.
Schwitters wanted to express everything that impinged
on his consciousness (or unconscious) over the thirteen
years (1923-36) of making this total environment. 29
The Merzbau gave form to and purged its content.
“Art is a spiritual function of man, which aims at freeing
him from life’s chaos (tragedy).” 30 That “tragedy” is the
unspeakable revelation of the unconscious that repelled
Dorner precisely because he understood it. At the same
time, it drew Schwitters inexorably because it was the
disorganizing force that he needed to overcome in order
to bring coherence to his own sense of self. Certainly the
times were disorienting and Schwitters said that “what we
express in our works is…the spirit of our times, dictated
24
Rudolf Jahn cited in Dietmar Elger, “Zur
Entstehung des Merzhaus,” in Michael
Erlhoff ed., Kurt Schwitters Almanach, 1982,
Postskriptum/Kulturamt der Stadt Hannover,
Hanover 1982, pp. 34-5; cited in John
Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The Museum of
Modern Art & Thames and Hudson, New York
1985, p. 154.
25
Käte Trauman Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters: A
Portrait from Life, University of California Press,
Berkeley and Los Angeles 1968, p. 91; cited
in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The Museum
of Modern Art & Thames and Hudson, New
York 1985, p. 160.
26
Kurt Schwitters, “Ich und meine Ziele,”
1930, pp. 115-116, in Kurt Schwitters, Das
literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume
5, DuMont, Cologne 1981, pp. 344-345;
cited in John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The
Museum of Modern Art & Thames and Hudson,
New York 1985, p. 161.
27
Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky: Life,
Letters, Texts, Thames & Hudson, London and
New York 1968, p. 36.
28
Alexander Dorner, quoted in Samuel
Cauman, The Living Museum: Experiences
of an Art Historian and Museum Director,
Alexander Dorner, New York University
Press, New York 1958, p. 36; cited in John
Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The Museum of
Modern Art & Thames and Hudson, New York
1985, p. 162.
29
Kurt Schwitters, “Ich und meine Ziele,”
1930, p. 5; in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5, DuMont,
Cologne 1981, p. 343; cited in John
Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The Museum of
Modern Art & Thames and Hudson, New York
1985, p. 165.
30
Kurt Schwitters, “Manifest Prolitkunst,”
1923, p. 5; in Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische
Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, volume 5, DuMont,
Cologne 1981, p. 143; cited in John
Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, The Museum of
Modern Art & Thames and Hudson, New York
1985, p. 42.

l
by the times themselves.” 31 But the disorienting invasions of his epilepsy also informed his
methods. By his own account, the first onset occurred when he was fourteen, after some local
boys destroyed a garden which he had carefully created – with roses, strawberries, a manmade
hill, and an artificial pond. After this event, he took ill for two years and it was at this time,
he said, that he found his love of art. 32 When he emerged as a mature artist in 1918 it was
with a turn to abstraction and he titled his first abstraction, Der verwunschene Garten [The
Enchanted Garden].
We can’t know how the epilepsy felt to Schwitters,
but Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s portrait of his own epilepsy,
couched in his character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot,
offers a telling insight. “He felt in a very curious
condition to-day,” Dostoyevsky wrote, “a condition
similar to that which had preceded his fits in bygone
years. He remembered that at such times he had been
particularly absent, and could not discriminate between
objects and persons even if he concentrated special
attention upon them.” 33 In the aftermath of epileptic
seizures, they leave a state of disorientation as the brain
recovers. 34 The attacks must have been disorganizing 35
for Schwitters too. Could his detachment with regard to
his materials and his project of reorganizing fragmentary
experience have been a symbolic reordering informed,
at least in part, by his epilepsy? 36
The aim of Dada was “a great negative work of
destruction” as Tristan Tzara announced at the 1922
conference he organized with Schwitters in Weimar. It
was motivated, Tzara said, from the sense of dissolution
in society after the War: “Honor, country, morality,
family, art, religion, liberty, fraternity had once
answered to human needs. Now nothing remains of
them but a skeleton of conventions…” 37 But instead of
taking up a political agenda, as the Berlin Dadaists had
done, Schwitters looked inward, seeking psychological
integrity. “I had all my parts back together again with
just a few things missing,” Baeselstiel reports at the
end of Die Zwiebel. But it was not without costs. Some
“shreds of my physical self stayed stuck to the knife.” 38
Under the pressure of Nazi persecution, Schwitters
fled to Norway in January of 1937 and when the Nazis
invaded Norway in April of 1940, Schwitters and his
son narrowly escaped to England. He had to leave the
Merzbau behind. He also left Helma who stayed in
Hanover to manage the four houses which provided the
31
Kurt Schwitters, “Ich und meine
Ziele,” 1930, p. 5; in Kurt Schwitters,
Das literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm
Lach, volume 5, DuMont, Cologne
1981, p. 346.
32
Kurt Schwitters, “Kurt Schwitters:
Herkunft, Werden und Entfaltung,”
1920/21, in Kurt Schwitters, Das
literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach,
volume 5, DuMont, Cologne 1981,
p. 83.
33
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot,
trans. Frederick Whishaw, Vizetelly &
Co., London 1887, p. 179.
34
Epileptic seizures result from
abnormal hyperactivity in cortical
nerve cells in an area of the brain. It
takes time to recover normal function
after a seizure, producing what is
called a “postictal state” that may
involve confusion, depression, anxiety,
and obsessive–compulsive behavior.
Spatial orientation, emotional
restraint, and the connecting of short
term and long term memory may be
affected depending on where in the
brain the trauma occurs. Impaired
speech may occur temporarily if the
medial region of the left temporal
lobe is involved, as Mo Costandi
[“Diagnosing Dostoyevsky’s Epilepsy”
https://neurophilosophy.wordpress.
com/2007/04/16/diagnosingdostoyevskys-epilepsy/]
suggests with
regard to Dostoyesvky’s seizures.
35
Gwendolen Webster provides
a vivid description of his seizures
but it isn’t clear on what evidence
she based her description. See:
Gwendolen Webster, Kurt Merz
Schwitters: a biographical study,
University of Wales Press, Cardiff
1997), p. 7.
36
There is evidence in the medical
literature that seizure disorders can
predispose certain individuals to
dissociative dysfunction.
37
Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto”
(1918) translated in Robert
Motherwell, Dada: The Painters and
the Poets, MA: G. K. Hall, Boston
1981, p. 81.
38
Kurt Schwitters, “The Onion
(Merzpoem 8)” translated by Peter
Wortsman, Cambridge Literary Review
I/3, Easter, Cambridge 2010, pp.
113-14.
85 SCHWITTERS: Tending the Enchanted Garden · by Jonathan Fineberg

Kurt Schwitters, Die frühlingstür, 1938
Assemblage, 87.8 x 72 cm
Galerie Gmurzynska
86 l
family income. She died of cancer in 1944 and the income was lost. He soon found a new
companion, Edith Thompson whom he nicknamed “Wantee,” and in 1945 they moved to the
Lake District in the northwest of England where he died three years later of heart failure.
Despite poverty and failing health Schwitters nevertheless embarked on a majestic late style in
Norway, as in the great Merzbild of 1938 Die frühlingstür (The Spring Door). In it, the space opens
up, as if the expanse of the bucolic Norwegian landscape liberated him from the congested urban
compositions done in Germany. In contrast to the concentrated energy of colliding orthogonals in
Construction for Noble Ladies, the freer, sweeping curves of Die frühlingstür, translucently painted
like gestures color mist in the air, open out to the surrounding space. Even the three dimensional
objects in Die frühlingstür seem to float weightlessly outward to the edges and beyond.
Abstract physical forms project even further, as if flying out of the composition, in the

l
Kurt Schwitters, Pollfoss, 1947
Oil and chalk on panel laid down on the artist’s mount, 17.2 x 17.2 cm
Galerie Gmurzynska
Surrealist Relief of 1943 and Heavy Relief of 1945, made in London. Then in the last two years
of his life Schwitters was remarkably productive making collages and beginning the construction
of a new Merzbau in the countryside – a “Merzbarn,” as he called it. These last years extend
the blossoming of the late style that first emerged in Norway as if the beautiful lakes and rugged
mountains of the Lake District reminded him of the beauty of nature in Norway and formed
a continuum with it in this thoughts. He even titled a little painting of 1947 Pollfoss – made
in England but titled after a secluded inn by a waterfall and fishing streams near the fjords of
Norway. Pollfoss is a tiny, remarkably free, sketchlike work with a gentle openness, in lyrical
clouds of color. Was it advanced age and experience that brought Schwitters to the calmer unity
in himself that we feel in Pollfoss? Or perhaps the expansiveness of nature that brought the
discernable inner peace that defines these late works?
87 SCHWITTERS: Tending the Enchanted Garden · by Jonathan Fineberg

88
Kurt Schwitters
Siegfried Gohr (2016)
A genius in friendship
Photograph of Kurt Schwitters, Käte Steinitz, Nelly van Doesburg,
Theo van Doesburg, Hans Nitzschke,
Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, in the studio of
Vordemberge-Gildewart, Hanover 1923
© RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Archive of Theo and
Nelly van Doesburg (0408)

Kurt Schwitters, who knew a lot of people and whom many of his acquaintances have described, was a
multifaceted personality which, in view of his life’s work as an artist and poet, scarcely comes as a surprise.
His companion, Hannah Höch, said: “It is not at all possible to approach in a few words such a complicated and
contradictory person like Schwitters. An artist through and through, obsessed with art, uninhibited in the use of
his artistic means like no other in his time. And, along with that, his bourgeois, even petit-bourgeois shell was
nevertheless genuine.” This can be supplemented by a description from Marguerite Hagenbach, the later wife
of Arp: “Hans said to me that Schwitters was one of his best friends, a great poet, but a little crazy. After the
Urlaut-Sonate that Schwitters had brilliantly recited [in Basel], he came to me and said, ‘It seems to me that
89

Kurt Schwitters: A genius in friendship · by Siegfried Gohr
90
Kurt Schwitters, GäsTebuch FÜR Die mERzausstellunG, 1922
Visitors’ book, pencil, colored pencil on cardboard (cover) and paper
Exhibition MERZ Ausstellung. Gemälde und Zeichnungen von Kurt Schwitters (Anna Blume), Roemer-Museum,
Hildesheim 1922
© bpk / Sprengel Museum Hannover / Brigitte Borrmann

you liked my sonata. May I introduce you to my dear friend, Arp? He is a great artist and poet and a likeable
man, but a little crazy.’”
91
This anecdote can be fathomed in many directions, but what the epithet “crazy” means, which Schwitters
and Arp mutually attributed to each other, has the important connotation that here it is a matter of persons who
possessed an artistic core that did not allow itself to be pushed aside and ‘deranged’, for which reason they
could be regarded from the outside as crazy.
A further motif can already be read from the sparse lines, namely, that of a friendship among artists. When,
as a consequence of the French Revolution, the ties of artists to the state and church became increasingly
loosened, artists sought a new exchange and a protection that often was only possible through friendships or
associations of artists. The German Nazarenes in Rome around 1800 marked a beginning. Innumerable further
unions followed. In the 20th century not only the element of friendship formed the ground for cohesion, but also
an artistic mission, an idea, a shared artistic or social project. Schwitters stimulated such unions, but he also
profited from initiatives emanating from others.
After friendly connections in his home-town of Hanover when he was still painting in a traditional way,
contact with the avant-garde in Berlin came about. One of the significant motors of the new art there was
Herwarth Walden with his gallery, Der Sturm. Here Schwitters exhibited for the first time in 1918. Walden was
active internationally, his artists coming not only from Germany. In the summer of 1919 Schwitters achieved a
breakthrough when he showed at Walden’s gallery the first Merz paintings, his completely individual version of
Dadaism. But Walden organized not only exhibitions, but also discussion evenings with talks, publishing also
a periodical and running a publishing house. Schwitters began to publish his first poems, not only in Walden’s
periodical, but also in the publishing house of Paul Steegemann in Hanover; here the anthology Anna Blume
appeared.
Schwitters remained restlessly active not only as an artist, but organized, starting in the 1920s, also
discussion evenings where he presented his own texts. Often, however, he planned these soirees not by himself,
for instance, on a trip to Prague in 1921. His wife, Helma Schwitters, also attended, as well as Raoul Hausmann
and Hannah Höch. The evenings were clearly successful, to which not least of all Schwitters’ personal charm
contributed. This was followed in 1922/23 by the legendary ‘Dada campaign’ in the Netherlands during which
numerous towns were visited. Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg and Vilmos Huzár took part. This enterprise
drew a lot of attention. For Schwitters, not only the event was important, but also the possibility of enlarging
his network. Scarcely any artist of his generation made and cultivated friendships so consciously, sought
out acquaintances, always guided by the striving to incorporate artists and people into his career who had
understanding for the avant-garde or were themselves engaged in artistic developments on the front line. The
episode about how Schwitters won over Raoul Hausmann is particularly telling. The whole thing took place in
1918 or 1919 in Café des Westens in Berlin. Schwitters went up to Hausmann and introduced himself which,
however, did not have any great effect. Then he said, “I am a painter; I nail my paintings”. Now the other became
curious and a lifelong friendship and collaboration resulted. Schwitters even tried from England to renew the
contract with the friend in order to realize their common newspaper project, PIN. However, it never came about.
Among all his friends, Hans Arp had a special place. They met for the first time in 1918 in Café des
Westens in Berlin. Arp was working in a style that he had developed from cubism. Under his influence Schwitters
glued some abstract collages in 1918, of which one is called Hans, thus representing an homage to his friend

Kurt Schwitters: A genius in friendship · by Siegfried Gohr
92
“Porträt Herwarth Walden”, poem by Kurt Schwitters in Herwarth
Walden (ed.), Der Sturm, Zehnter Jahrgang, Achtes Heft, Der Sturm
Verlag, Hanover 1919

93
Photograph of Helma Schwitters, Nelly van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, in the apartment of
the architect Jan Wils, Den Haag 1923 (Dada Tournée)
© RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Archive of Theo and Nelly van Doesburg (0408)
who showed him the way out of expressionism and futurism. The two artists had much in common, so that
the contact remained even when Schwitters was in exile in Norway. Both were poets of stature, both used
to employ irony and humour also in their works. In the structure of their personalities, they were completely
independent individuals who did not stick to convention. Despite all appearances to the contrary, both had
strong ties with nature. Alfred Döblin, looking on Schwitters from the outside, wrote in 1919: “I have never seen
any painter worship nature so intensively. He will not admit it to me. But that doesn’t mean anything.” Visits
by Schwitters to Basel and Meudon near Paris consolidated the friendship with Arp, and there were common
works time and again. Here an affinity of intellect manifested itself that had deep roots.
It was above all the letters and postcards through which Schwitters built up and cultivated his network
of contacts. In 1920 he exhibited in Dresden together with Oskar Schlemmer and Willi Baumeister, in the

94
Kurt Schwitters (ed.), Merz 6. Jmitatoren watch step!, Merzverlag, Hanover 1923

Postcard Kurt and Helma
Schwitters to Theo and Nelly van
Doesburg
© RKD – Netherlands Institute for
Art History, Archive of Theo and
Nelly van Doesburg (0408)
95 Kurt Schwitters: A genius in friendship · by Siegfried Gohr

96
aftermath writing several postcards to Schlemmer, whose work he obviously valued highly. However, there was
no closer collaboration. But because Schwitters maintained close relations with the Bauhaus in Weimar, he was
to encounter Schlemmer there again. The school published portfolios of graphic works and Bauhaus books. The
third portfolio to appear had the title, German Artists. The ten participants included also Schwitters. However,
with regard to the planned Merz book in the Bauhaus books series, this never got beyond an announcement.
After Schwitters had held his first soiree in 1921, he used every opportunity for public appearances. Therefore
he was to be heard also at the Bauhaus in 1925 and 1926. He adapted a well-known saying from choral
societies to the Bauhaus: “For where there is a Bauhaus, there is where you can settle; evil people do not know
anything about squares!” Already in 1929, the founder of the Weimar School, Walter Gropius, commissioned
him to graphically design all the printed material for the Dammerstock Settlement in Karlsruhe. Friendships
were formed during this period as a matter of course. Among these, however, one needs to be particularly
underscored, namely, the friendship with Dr Walter Dexel who was active in Jena as the director of the
Kunstverein. Not only letters and postcards were exchanged with him and his family, but personal visits were
also arranged. Dexel was, properly speaking, an academic art historian, but switched to curating exhibitions,
setting up a noteworthy program in Jena over the years. Apart from that, he was active as an artist. His
hallmark was geometrically formed glass panels. Schwitters obviously felt a great affinity to Dexel’s efforts
which is clearly expressed in the extant correspondence. Viewed from today, the avant-garde scene at the
time was relatively compact so that everybody could know everybody else if they wanted to. Apart from that,
the Bauhaus represented a platform on which the international avant-garde could meet and exchange views.
Such an opportunity was provided, for instance, by the Dada Meeting in Weimar in 1922 where an impressive
number of artists got together.
A special feature of Schwitters’ public appearances, apart from official appearances with readings,
performances, recitations of the Ursonate, etc, consisted in his spontaneous, puzzling character that broke
through all conventions. One day in May 1926, Schwitters came upon Leon Trotsky, his wife and secretary
in a restaurant on the banks of the Havel River. He went up to his table, recited the scherzo of the Ursonate,
and declared that his poetry was the Permanent Revolution. Thereupon something unheard of happened, for
Trotsky, somewhat hesitantly at first, recited the scherzo together with Schwitters. It was a sign of an immediate
mutual understanding.
Before Schwitters finally went into exile in Norway on 2 January 1937, it was the Netherlands and
Switzerland that he visited repeatedly and to where his contacts of friendships led. After the ‘Dada campaign’,
Schwitters travelled almost every year to the Netherlands. There were many different reasons for this. On one
hand, he gave talks; on the other, in 1925 he took part in exhibitions in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. One year
later he spent holidays with Helma and his son, Ernst, on the Dutch coast in Kijkduin. Articles by Schwitters
often appeared in Dutch avant-garde publications. Up until 1936 when he travelled through the country for the
last time, he had left behind traces as an artist, poet and writer. His friendship with the mathematician, Hans
Freudenthal, and his wife, Susanne, in Amsterdam kept its significance alongside the professional connections
with the art world. Schwitters had got to know the couple in Norway in 1934. This was followed by several visits
to the Freudenthals in Amsterdam. Hans wrote several important mathematical books, but he was particularly
interested in the didactics of science, that is, in the question as to how mathematics lessons were ‘realistically’
to be designed. It can only be surmised what he and Schwitters talked about. But did not Schwitters’ public
engagement have traits of a bizarre, didactic effort to win over the public to the avant-garde and educate it?

97
Kurt Schwitters: A genius in friendship · by Siegfried Gohr
Kurt Schwitters, Merz 7. Merz ist Form. Formen heißt entformeln, Merzverlang, Hanover 1924

Kurt Schwitters: A genius in friendship · by Siegfried Gohr
98
It was similar with his trips to Switzerland. However, initially there were obstacles to visiting Switzerland
because in 1923 the Swiss consul in Bremen denied Schwitters a visa. The reason? Schwitters’ presence in
Zurich was not necessary and not desired. Only in 1929 did Schwitters really come to Switzerland to recite
poetry together with Arp. It was the married couple, Siegfried Giedeon and Carola Giedeon-Welcker, who
initially effectively supported and advanced Schwitters in Switzerland, remarkably, also Schwitters the wordartist.
James Joyce was several times a guest in the couple’s home, which presupposed an understanding
for the new language of modern literature. In Switzerland Hans Arp remained a continual point of reference
because he often spent time there. A climax for Schwitters’ public resonance in Switzerland is doubtlessly
represented by a discussion evening on 1 December 1935 at the home of the collector couple, Annie and
Oskar Müller-Widmann. The acquaintance with these avant-garde collectors who had built a modern house in
the Basel suburb of Bruderholz in 1934, was mediated by Jan Tschichold who had emigrated to Basel in 1933
for political reasons. Not Zurich, but the city on the bend in the Rhine attracted Schwitters, for the museums
and the modern architecture there interested him lastingly. Apart from that, his art found more sympathetic
understanding there. Therefore, the evening of 1 December 1935 in Bruderholz remained unforgettable for
him as the conclusion of the period of his life before going into exile. From Norway Schwitters wrote on 17
December 1939, that is, shortly after the Second World War had broken out, to Annie Müller-Widmann: “I would
so much like to come to you once again, and it would have to be peace, sunshine and spring, and all our good
friends would have to be there. That would be a foretaste of paradise.”
How much Schwitters suffered from the situation can be measured by how much previously he had been
an artist under way, a restless person who could set up anywhere. He always had his material, that is, the
ingredients for his collages, with him so that new works could be made anywhere.
During the years in Norway he made acquaintances in his own way, and even won friends, but there
was no scene and no audience for modern art. Therefore Schwitters was isolated in this regard. After he
had narrowly escaped to Scotland in 1940, he was compelled to spend seventeen months in the Hutchinson
Camp on the Isle of Man. As oppressive as this situation was, he nevertheless met other internees from
the German cultural scene: writers, artists, intellectuals, musicians, actors, scientists. The emigrants made a
virtue of necessity by organizing talks and theatre performances. Because Schwitters was sought after as a
portrait painter, he had some income and was able to buy his way out of the usual camp duties. He shared his
room with the social philosopher, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, the offspring of a painter family with connections to the
Düsseldorf Art Academy. The social philosopher had analyzed especially political, economic and social relations
in the Weimar Republic in order to theoretically understand the rise of fascism. Schwitters dedicated one of
his most impressive portraits to his roommate. Sitting with his pipe in his mouth, his gaze directed straight out
of the picture, Sohn-Rethel is characterized as someone reflecting from a distance, which is how Schwitters
had got to know him. The two had shared topics to speak about on the basis of their experiences during the
Weimar Republic.
Once Schwitters had been released from internment, he first went to London where he met a young
woman, Edith Thomas, whom he called Wantee, probably derived from, “[Do you] want tea?” He felt this new
partner to be an angel whom his wife, Helma, had sent. Wantee cared for and protected the sick and frail man
until his death in 1948. She was the last in a long series of lovers whom Schwitters had been able to win over —
with charm, wit and adoration: Käte Steinitz, Grete Dexel, Hannah Höch, Nelly van Doesburg, Katherine S. Dreier,
and many others. The women played a significant role not only in Schwitters’ life, but also in his work. One of the
most beautiful early assemblages was given the title, Construction for Noble Ladies (1919). The artist had named

the Merzbau in Waldhausenstraße 5 in Hanover Cathedral of Erotic Misery. Among the numerous caves and
grottoes there were two that Hannah Höch was able to set up herself, namely: the Goethe Grotto and the Brothel
with a Lady with Three Legs were her own work, surely a proof of special appreciation. One cave was dedicated
to his wife, Helma, an admirable person without whose understanding and patience Schwitters would never have
been able to cope with his career that brought him into the foremost rank of artists of his generation. Picasso
and Matisse, Beckmann and Kokoschka continually chose their own women and others for motifs for their work.
Because of Schwitters’ different method of working, this is not so obvious with him, but as an undercurrent, the
erotic or friendly energies can always be discerned. Thus Schwitters created not only a cosmos of works called
Merz, but also a cosmos of people who gave him a hold and closeness in his restlessness.
99
Epilogue
It has often been reported how persistently Schwitters insisted on exchanging works with friends. A
consequence of this were the many dedications that can be found handwritten on the lower edge of the works.
A further result was the Merz collection. Today 54 works can still be documented, frequently from artists
who are today famous. A series of works vanished in the Merzbau, being burnt along with it. The group of
works must therefore originally have been much more extensive. As a ‘private museum’, the Merz collection
mirrored Schwitters’ biography, at the same time including a significant selection from the creative work of
modern artists. From this angle, the Merzbau can also be regarded as an artists’ museum, complemented by
such works which Schwitters otherwise kept with him.
Photograph of Käte Steinitz, Theo van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, and Nelly van Doesburg, 1930s
© Tate, London 2015

100
Kurt Schwitters: Guestbook of
the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Guestbook of the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Kladde, 28 x 23,5 cm
Sprengel Museum Hannover, Kunstbesitz der Landeshauptstadt Hannover
© Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Herling/Gwose/Werner, Sprengel Museum Hannover

101

102
Kurt Schwitters: Guestbook of
the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Guestbook of the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Kladde, 28 x 23,5 cm
Sprengel Museum Hannover, Kunstbesitz der Landeshauptstadt Hannover
© Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Herling/Gwose/Werner, Sprengel Museum Hannover

103

104
Kurt Schwitters: Guestbook of
the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Guestbook of the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Kladde, 28 x 23,5 cm
Sprengel Museum Hannover, Kunstbesitz der Landeshauptstadt Hannover
© Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Herling/Gwose/Werner, Sprengel Museum Hannover

105

106
Kurt Schwitters: Guestbook of
the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Guestbook of the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Kladde, 28 x 23,5 cm
Sprengel Museum Hannover, Kunstbesitz der Landeshauptstadt Hannover
© Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Herling/Gwose/Werner, Sprengel Museum Hannover

107

108
Kurt Schwitters: Guestbook of
the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Guestbook of the Ernst and Käte Steinitz family, 1920-1961
Kladde, 28 x 23,5 cm
Sprengel Museum Hannover, Kunstbesitz der Landeshauptstadt Hannover
© Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Herling/Gwose/Werner, Sprengel Museum Hannover

109

Kurt Schwitters & Kazimir Malevich
110
On the 10th May 1927 Kazimir Malevich wrote a letter, from Berlin,
addressing Kurt Schwitters. Two versions exist of this letter. One
manuscript is in the Bauhaus-Archive in the Museum für Gestaltung
in Berlin (Inv. n. 2848). The transcript is published in I. A. Vakar, T.
H. Mihienko’s Малевич о себе. Современники о Малевиче. Письма.
Документы. Воспоминания. Критика, том I (RA, Moscow 2004, pp.
189-191), as well as in English translation in Irina A. Vakar and Tatiana
N. Mikhienko’s Kazimir Malevich. Letters and Documents, vol. 1 (Tate
Publishing, London 2015, pp. 202-204).
The second manuscript, a shortened version, can be found in the Stedelijk
Museum in Amsterdam, which was reproduced in English in Troels
Anderen’s K. S. Malevich. The Artist, Infinity, Suprematism – unpublished
writings 1913-33, vol IV (Borgens Forlag, Amsterdam 1978, pp. 160-162).
It remains unclear if the letter was translated into German and sent to the
addressee.
In Malevich’s letter he references Schwitters’ essay “Mein Merz = Meine
Monstra Merz = Jahrmarktvorbild im Sturm”, which was published in the

111
journal Der Sturm (Monatsschrift, 17. Jahrgang, Der Sturm Verlag, Berlin
October 1926, pp. 106-107). In this essay Schwitters names Malevich as an
artist who inspired him.
In response, Malevich discusses elements raised in Schwitters’ writing, i.e.
the meaning of art and if Constructivism can be considered art, which are
coincidentally topics that occupied Malevich since 1910.
There is no evidence to suggest that Schwitters and Malevich were
personally acquainted. However, we do know that Schwitters was interested
in Malevich’s work. The periodical Merz 8/9 (Merzverlag, Hanover 1924),
published by Schwitters in cooperation with El Lissitzky, pictures Malevich’s
Black Square with commentary.
In Schwitters’ Merzbau, in which he dedicated grottos to different artists, a
space was devoted to Malevich in celebration of his work.
The long-distance friendship between Malevich and Schwitters was most
likely initiated by El Lissitzky.
p. 112-113 Letter from Kazimir Malevich to Kurt Schwitters, 10 May 1927, Berlin
Inv. No. 2848
Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin.

112
Kurt Schwitters & Kazimir Malevich

113

Kurt Schwitters & Kazimir Malevich
114
To Kurt Schwitters
From Kazimir Malewicz
Having read your article in the journal Der Sturm of October 1926, I see that you are an advocate of Art, but
you write in such a tone that it seems like a voice crying in the wilderness, as if the entire field were already
overgrown with Constructivism, and neither Art nor artist were visible behind this overgrowth. But despite all
this, you still make so bold as to call yourself an artist. At the very time when Constructivism (Constructure) is
already becoming an unremarkable phenomenon, at the very time when the banner of Art is beginning to be
raised and the artist is liberated from enslavement to ideas holding sway over his sensations and, strange as it
might seem, given the fact that painters were the first to shrug off objectness from the shoulders of art, and were
the first to start rocking, striking anew at representation, while the architects, who, it would seem, had gained a
firm hold exclusively on expedient forms, who maintained and continue even now to maintain the reason for the
manifestation of forms from the functional side, which in turn flows from the idea, turn up in the ranks of the front
of art, as such.
It must indeed be acknowledged: that Art is still in a period of crisis, Constructivism is not completely cured,
Art in our day is suffering a severe case of it, but it is my diagnosis nonetheless that it will prevail, for man will
still remain man and the machine will not possess him, and it will not turn him into a mechanical automaton,
since he has made the machine to liberate his movements for more important matters. That is already enough for
Constructivism not to become the apotheosis of life, but only Art.
Man will never throw himself into the slot of an automated machine, like a coin, in order to receive in exchange
a dead piece of cardboard for his fare, or a five-kopeck stamp. Because he has constructed it to carry out dead
functions, for which mechanical movements exist. Man, by contrast, has reserved for himself live functions and live
movements. Hence Constructivism can never kill Art, but the automaton has triumphed over the Constructivists.
Contemporary artists who have transformed themselves into Constructivists under the influence of “expedient
technology” have renounced Art, wishing to serve life and provide it in time with a perfected economic “kitchenbedroom”
or “kitchen-automobile,” they are saw blades, that is, something even life is reluctant to accept.
The Constructivists viewed contemporary man as a contemporary automaton, they adopted the automaton as
the image of man. Thus, unwittingly they themselves became automatons, with a purpose and the image of a
purpose—and it’s the purpose that was their automaton. Hence they suffer from visions of purpose-images and from
a change in conceptions, therefore they suffer too from a mania for overcoming the economic purposes of squalid
life. They themselves don’t know that the construction for them serves only as a method of crawling out of those
nooks and crannies into which life has thrust them.
But since this is their purpose and image, obviously they will never crawl out, for to crawl out from under purpose
and image, that is, to triumph over its realization, means to enter objectlessness.
The new artists, being revolutionaries in spirit, were carried away by contemporary
changes in political and economic human relations, as a result they introduce new achievements in Art as a new
technical means of expressing political and economic
relations, instead of revealing Art as such, liberating it from this or that ideology, and
creating an Art that is really new in form, they engaged in illustration, representation
(at a time when it would have been more essential to go to the barricades not with
canvases, but with a more expressive instrument).
This is one instance, in another case part of the artists of the new Art went to work
constructing various types of expedient objects, and in this instance, such artists rejected Art and ceased to be

115
artists. In the wake of this confusion of concepts the spirit, the strength were also directed, not to a new form of
Art, but to the form that had been before, that is, illustrating and serving ideologies. Hence the new artists begin to
overlook Art.
The late 19th century and early 20th century were noted for a supreme event in Art. This event was noteworthy
because it led to objectlessness, it freed itself from ideological tenants who are like hermit crabs, who crawl into
beautiful shells and turn them into utilitarian, expedient living quarters. Moreover, they even propose that if the
hermit crab didn’t exist, then the shell wouldn’t exist either, and with their ideology they prove that the shell was
the result of its [the crab’s] functions, of its life.
The shell itself also became convinced of this ideology and gave itself up to be eaten, from which the ideological
crab only grew stronger in fat and body and made itself beautiful with [the shell’s] Art. Just so will the artists be
eaten by the ideologues.
Look at the hermit crab, sitting on the mother-of-pearl shell, and you will see that a harmonious connection
between its image? [sic] and the image of the shell does not exist. So too in Art there is no harmony between the
tavern of life and Art.
Religion and the State are sometimes connected, sometimes they don’t understand each other and part ways,
essentially this is one and the same thing, it is only a difference in methods of attaining a goodly kingdom in
heaven or on earth.
The same with Science-Technology, in developing means of communications, the train, the auto, the airplane, the
radio, and so on, for the most rapid achievement of the goal and the image of the idea, in like manner it does not
achieve it. This has already been proven by the historical movement of materialism and Religionism.
We have only to mention the fact that thousands of engineers with millions of workers and peasants to this day
have not been able to build anything permanent or unchanging, whereas the artist, with a simple bristle brush or
chisel has made things that have worked permanently and in like manner throughout all ages.
Artists long ago triumphed over space and time, and image and idea, without weapons, power, gases, and
dynamite. Everything else is merely breaking down an open door.
What’s more, artists long ago destroyed “thought,” something that has not been achieved despite all the efforts of
high-minded people to create a particular form of life. After all, every State or religion system (so-called order)
strives to establish a single, unchanging thinking, and how similar are the religious commandments:
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“Thou shalt have no other thinking but mine,” says the State idea.
Anyone who thinks otherwise will be punished.
Thus, Comrade Schwitters, artists have long ago come to the watch-tower of rest
and objectlessness, and the hermit crab to this day has not found his abode, he has built nothing, nothing
comfortable, nothing utilitarian, but in order not to fail completely, he passes himself off as a genius of the
ideological future, since he can offer nothing in the present, and wishing to be conscientious, he says right off the
bat, “I promise nothing in the present, only in the future,” but even so he ate up the shell today. Artists offer a
thing of today, for it is in all things today, of today (Praezens [sic]).
Kazimir Malevich
Berlin 1o May 1917
This English translation is published in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism Volume 1
(Tate Publishing, 2015) and is reproduced by permission of the Tate Trustees.

Kurt Schwitters & Kazimir Malevich
116
El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters (eds.),
Merz 8/9, Merzverlag, Hanover 1924,
cover and page reproducing Malevich’s
Black Square

p. 117-119 cover and two pages by Kurt Schwitters, “Mein Merz und Meine Monstre Merz –
Muster Messe im Sturm”, in Herwarth Walden (ed.), Der Sturm, Monatsschrift, 17. Jahrgang,
Der Sturm Verlag, Berlin October 1926
117

118
Kurt Schwitters & Kazimir Malevich

119

120
THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
KARIN ORCHARD (2000)
THE ELOQUENCE
OF WASTE
KURT SCHWITTERS’ WORK AND ITS
RECEPTION IN AMERICA

“I think I could do well in the USA.”
(Letter from Kurt Schwitters to Helma
Schwitters, 11 June 1941)
Last year in the May issue of the American
art journal Artnews, when the journal’s editors
together with critics and curators listed “the
century’s 25 most influential artists” Kurt
Schwitters was not amongst those chosen.
Instead the list named artists such as Max
Ernst, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans,
Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko and
Marcel Duchamp. Despite this “relative
absence of Kurt Schwitters” 1 in the late 20th
century, in the 1950s and 60s he had been
hailed along with Marcel Duchamp as a hero
of Modernism and as a role model for avantgarde
artists in the post-war period.
In order to analyse the response amongst
artists in the USA to Kurt Schwitters’ work,
and its influence on the next generation, it is
necessary to establish what artists, critics and
curators living there could have known of his
work. We have to ask which works from which
periods of his career could be seen in the
original, which of his theoretical and literary
texts were available in English translations,
how was he presented in publications and
exhibition catalogues, in which contexts,
in what kind of galleries, museums and
exhibitions was he present? Since Schwitters,
to his regret, never visited the United States,
he did not have the opportunity to promote
his work there personally nor to captivate
audiences there with his skills as a speaker
and performer. If he had been able to fulfil
his plans to go the United States or even to
emigrate there, his impact would no doubt
have been that much greater, for he generally
made a memorable impression with his
pleasing, humorous yet eccentric personality.
Schwitters’ contacts with the USA went
back to 1920, the year after he had started
to work on his so-called ‘Merz’ collage
technique. The initiative came from the
American collector Katherine S. Dreier, who
was looking for new artists and ideas for the
Société Anonyme, which she had founded with
Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray in New York.
In her search she travelled through Europe,
assiduously making new contacts. 2 It was in
Herwarth Walden’s Sturm gallery in Berlin,
that she first encountered the nailed and
glued pictures by Schwitters that were causing
a scandal at the time. Convinced of their
quality, from then on she showed Schwitters’
work almost every year in the exhibitions
of the Société Anonyme which also used to
tour throughout the United States. The most
important of these exhibitions was certainly
the International Exhibition of Modern Art in
the Brooklyn Museum in New York in 1926. 3
Since the legendary Armory Show in New York
in 1913, there had been no comparable major
exhibition of international contemporary art
in the United States. Katherine S. Dreier
had asked Schwitters and his wife Helma to
assist in the selection process, particularly
for the Constructivist section. They both
enthusiastically threw themselves into this
task and acted as European agents for the
Société Anonyme. In 1931 Schwitters was
even appointed an Honorary President of the
society. In the Brooklyn exhibition there was
a total of eleven works by Kurt Schwitters on
show.
Over the years Katherine S. Dreier
purchased a large number of works by Kurt
Schwitters from all the different stages in his
career, both for her private collection and for
the collection of the Société Anonyme. This
1
Rudi Fuchs, Conflicts with Modernism or the Absence of Kurt
Schwitters/Konflikte mit dem Modernismus oder die Abwesenheit
von Kurt Schwitters, Bern and Berlin 1991.
2
See Gwendolen Webster, ‘Kurt Schwitters and Katherine Dreier’,
in: German Life and Letters, vol. 52, no. 4, 1999, pp. 443–456.
3
See Ruth L. Bohan, The Société Anonyme’s Brooklyn Exhibition.
Katherine Dreier and Modernism in Amerika, Ann Arbor 1982, pp.
47f., 55.
121

THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
122
Katherine S. Dreier, Constantin Aladjalov, International Exhibition of Modern Art, Societe Anonyme,
Brooklyn Museum, New York 1926

Letter from Kurt Schwitters
to Katherine S. Dreier, 6 October 1947
Katherine S. Dreier Papers / Société Anonyme
archive. Yale Collection of American Literature,
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
123

124
THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
became partly accessible to the general public
when Dreier gave it to the Yale University
Art Museum in 1941. After her death in
1952, Marcel Duchamp was named as the
administrator of the private collection left
in her estate. He donated nineteen works
by Schwitters to the Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA) in New York, another eleven went to
the collection in Yale University Art Museum,
three to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
in New York, one Merz picture and one collage
to the Phillips Collection and two works to
the American University in Washington. But
Katherine S. Dreier’s support for Schwitters
did not stop at the purchase of works of art for
her collection; she also smoothed the path for
purchases by other leading private American
collections and assisted the artist and his
family financially during the difficult years of
his exile. She did not meet him face to face
until 1926 when she visited him in Hanover.
There was a second meeting in 1929; once
again they met in Hanover, this time together
with Duchamp. There is no detailed record of
this meeting, and we can only speculate as to
how this single encounter between these two
protagonists of Modernism may have gone.
Schwitters felt greatly flattered by the interest
Katherine S. Dreier took in him, particularly
since this committed collector offered him a
good chance of becoming better known in the
USA. Yet Dreier found it difficult to interest a
wider public in Schwitters’ art. In her speech
at the first one-man show of Schwitters’ work
in New York in the Pinacotheca Gallery in
1948, she was very open: “It has taken a long
time for the American public to respond to the
Schwitters though we had shown them already
in 1920. I had thought that the response
would come as quickly as did that of Klee, not
realising that Schwitters was far more difficult
for the average person to understand because
he was purely the painter and there was no
approach through the intellect which Klee
reached through his whimsical delineation
of ideas. This all happened 27 years ago and
except for a few lovers of the rare quality
of Schwitters’ ‘Merz’ collages, he remained
almost unknown in this country”. 4 But by his
first one-man show on American soil at the
latest, Schwitters was recognised as a leading
protagonist of abstract modernism.
Again through Dreier, in 1935 contact
was made with the newly founded Museum
of Modern Art in New York, which was
– alongside the Société Anonyme – the
most important institution for modern art.
On Dreier’s suggestion, the director of the
Museum, Alfred Barr, visited Schwitters in
Hanover, and bought one picture that year
and two the following year for the Museum
of Modern Art collection. 5 In the extremely
influential exhibitions put on by MoMA in
1936, Cubism and Abstract Art 6 and Fantastic
Art, Dada, Surrealism 7 there were collages
by Schwitters and Merz pictures, as well as
photographs of the Merzbau on display and
illustrated in the catalogue. The catalogue
essay in the shape of an introduction to Dada
by Georges Hugnet devoted a whole section
to Schwitters.
The regard that those responsible at
the Museum of Modern Art had for Kurt
Schwitters and his work is evident from the
fact that they awarded him a Fellowship
as a means of supporting him in his work
on a third Merzbau. Since 1946 Schwitters,
4
Katherine S. Dreier, unpublished manuscript (carbon copy), Kurt
Schwitters Archive in the Sprengel Museum Hannover
5
Reichardt-Schwertschlag Der We˝ihnachtsmann, 1922, Collage,
18.7 x 15.2 cm; Mz. 379. Potsdamer, 1922, Collage 17.9 x 14.4 cm;
Zeichnung A 2 Haus. (Hansi), 1918, Collage, 17.9 x 14.5 cm.
6
The works exhibited were Strahlen Welt Merzbild 31B, 1920, and
Merzkonstruktion (above), 1921, as well as four collages from 1921
to 1926, both assemblages were illustrated in the catalogue.
7
The exhibits included Strahlen Welt Merzbild 31B, 1920, three
collages from 1920 to 1922 and nine photographs of the Merzbau;
the Merz picture and two photographs of the Merzbau were illustrated
in the catalogue.

together with Alfred Barr and the curator
Margaret Miller, had been working on plans
to complete earlier Merzbaus; initially the
idea was to rebuild and restore the Merzbau
in Hanover that had been destroyed in 1943
during the war; later on discussions turned
to the question of completing the Haus am
Bakken, the Norwegian Merzbau in Lysaker
near Oslo which Schwitters had had to
abandon when he fled the country. However,
the wholesale destruction of the Hanover
Merzbau and Schwitters’ precarious state of
health meant that neither of these was a viable
possibility. By this time the artist was already
living in the Lake District, which led him to
consider undertaking a new Merz project in a
barn in Elterwater near Ambleside. The first
instalment of the Fellowship of a thousand
dollars arrived punctually in June 1947 on his
60th birthday, and he started immediately on
his Merzbarn. Yet this project, too, was never
to be finished since Schwitters died early the
following year.
In 1946, Schwitters also discussed
other projects besides the Merzbau with the
Museum of Modern Art: these included a
one-man show, another planned project was
his participation in an international group
show focusing on collage, which was initially
intended for summer 1947. However, both
shows were repeatedly postponed – and in
the end Schwitters’ first one-man show in
MoMA did not take place until 1985. During
the earlier discussion period, Schwitters had
already selected 39 recent collages and sent
them to New York in four groups. 8 Some of
these were shown in the major exhibition
Collage which finally took place from 21
September until 5 December 1948, after
Schwitters’ death. Nineteen collages by
Schwitters were shown, eight from 1946/47.
Besides Picasso with twenty works and Max
Ernst with twelve collages, Schwitters was one
of the few artists in this influential exhibition
whose work was shown in any great numbers. 9
This in itself bears witness to the recognition
he enjoyed at MoMA as a pioneer of the art
of collage. In the short introduction to the
list of exhibits, his Merz art is described as
being “distinct from the anti-aesthetic and
political directness of the Dada movement
in Germany” – a distinction that was to be
very important for the subsequent reception
of his work. Although Schwitters’ œuvre has
frequently been labelled as Dada, the qualities
of his more aesthetic approach had in fact
been recognised early on.
The exhibition was very positively
received and reviewed. The most influential
critic and promoter of the emergent Abstract
Expressionism, Clement Greenberg, wrote that
Schwitters and Hans Arp – even if at a “certain
distance” – could be seen to be following in
the footsteps of Picasso and Braque, the “great
masters of collage”. 10 Greenberg’s estimation
of the significance of collage resulted in a farreaching
reassessment of this technique: “The
medium of collage has played a crucial role in
the painting and sculpture of the 20th century,
and it is the most trenchant and direct key to
the aesthetics of genuine modern art.” 11
Since the planned one-man show of Kurt
Schwitters’ work in MoMA did not come to
fruition, credit for putting on the first solo
presentation of his work in the USA goes to
a commercial gallery. At the same time, the
8
Lists from the estate in the Kurt Schwitters Archive in the
Sprengel Museum Hannover.
9
According to the hectographed exhibition list 102 works were
shown. There was no catalogue, although there was evidently a plan
to publish one, see the letter from Margaret Miller to
Kurt Schwitters, 29 November 1946, copy in the Kurt Schwitters
Archive in the Sprengel Museum Hannover.
10
Clement Greenberg, untitled, in the column ‘Art’, in: The Nation
167, no. 21, 27 November 1948, pp. 612ff., reprinted in: idem, The
Collected Essays and Criticism, ed. by John O’Brian, Chicago and
London, 1986, pp. 259–263, here p. 262.
11
Ibid., p. 259.
125

126
THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
Exhibition catalogue
for Kurt Schwitters
at The Pinacotheca, New York,
January-February 1948
(front cover, text by Naum Gabo)
© Tate, London 2016

exhibition in the Pinacotheca Gallery in New
York also became, by force of circumstances,
a memorial exhibition, since it opened on
19 January 1948 shortly after the death of
the artist. This exhibition had also been
planned during Schwitters’ lifetime and he
had partly selected the works himself. Once
again, it was Katherine S. Dreier who had
introduced the gallerist Rose Fried to the
work of the German Merz artist and who also
supported the exhibition by lending works.
Schwitters and Rose Fried had enjoyed a
lively correspondance since late 1946 and
were both enthused by their shared plans for
an exhibition. In order to set this exhibition
apart from the Collage exhibition which was
scheduled to take place at the same time in
MoMA, Schwitters suggested showing Merz
pictures and sculptures as well as collages. 12
In the end the exhibition contained collages
and constructions, mainly from 1946/47, with
26 entries in the catalogue.
Even before the exhibition had opened
Rose Fried was already able to sell works,
with the result that she asked Schwitters
and Katherine S. Dreier to send more
works. 13 From a commercial point of view the
exhibition turned out to be a disaster, because
while it was running only another two works
were sold. But over time the situation changed
and in October 1948 Rose Fried wrote to the
artist’s son, Ernst Schwitters, asking for more
works, since “there is growing interest in
them and I would like to put on an exhibition
again this year, if possible”. 14 The opening of
a second one-man show with the title Small
Group of Collages by Kurt Schwitters was,
however, delayed until 1953. In 1954 and
1956 Rose Fried showed his work in group
shows, amongst others in her important
International Collage Exhibition, which took
place in spring 1956, and with eighty-five
selected works traced the development of
collage from the beginnings of Modernism
right up to contemporary works by artists such
as Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner and Anne
Ryan, to name just a few of the American
participants.
During the war and in the immediate postwar
period, the reception of Kurt Schwitters’
art reached one of its early highpoints. New
York became a focal point for the avantgarde
in art, and the Merz artist played an
important part in this as an inspiration and
role-model. His increasing renown coincided
with the emergence of an independent art
scene and new artistic tendencies in the USA,
the so-called New York School, Abstract
Expressionism and Neo-Dada. There was even
a suggestion that the new movement should
be called Neo-Merz instead of Neo-Dada. 15
Robert Motherwell is regarded as
one of the leading exponents of Abstract
Expressionism. His early works had been
included alongside Schwitters’ works in the
aforementioned exhibition Collage in MoMA
in 1948, as well as in the collage exhibition
that Rose Fried put on in her gallery in 1956.
However, the exhibition which had originally
sparked off his interest in this medium
had taken place much earlier. In 1942,
Motherwell had met the American collector
12
Letter from Kurt Schwitters to Rose Fried, 25 January 1947,
Archives of American Art, Rose Fried Gallery Papers, microfilm no.
2206.
13
Letter from Rose Fried to Kurt Schwitters, 27 May 1947, Kurt
Schwitters Archive in the Sprengel Museum Hannover. Amongst
other things she sold a collage to a “young artist”, see letter from
Rose Fried to Katherine S. Dreier, 25 March 1947, Yale University,
The Beinicke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, Box
29, Folder 838. Unfortunately it is not possible to say who this artist
might have been.
14
Letter from Rose Fried to Ernst Schwitters, 31 October 1948,
Kurt Schwitters Archive in the Sprengel Museum Hannover.
15
Irving Sandler, ‘Ash can revisited’, in: Art International IV, no. 8,
1060, p. 29, as quoted in: Maria Müller, Aspekte der Dada-Rezeption,
1950–1966, Essen 1987, p. 86.
127

THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
128
Private view invitation to the
Collage exhibition held at The
Museum of Modern Art, 1948
(front cover, inside and back
cover)
© Tate, London 2015

and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim, who had
owned one of Schwitters’ larger works since
1940 – his assemblage Maraak Var I of
1930 – and who had already exhibited five
collages by Schwitters as long ago as 1938 in
London, in the Collage exhibition in her first
gallery, the Guggenheim Jeune. 16 Motherwell
must certainly have been able to study her
collection in detail, particularly since he later
advised Peggy Guggenheim on art matters. In
October 1942 she had opened her legendary
Art of the Century Gallery in New York,
and was planning the major international
Exhibition of Collage for the following year,
which was to include artists such as Picasso,
Matisse and – of course – Schwitters. In
addition this was to be the first overview
exhibition of collage in the United States. The
young American artists Robert Motherwell,
Jackson Pollock and William Baziotos were
also invited to contribute collages to this
exhibition. All three were a little hesitant at
first, since they had never made any collages
before, and Motherwell and Pollock decided
to carry out their first experiments in Pollock’s
studio. This proved to be a crucial experience
in Motherwell’s development and from that
point onwards, collage played a major part in
his œuvre. 17
Robert Motherwell was not only
recognised as an artist but also made a
name for himself as a leading critic and art
historian, and as such he was responsible for
The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology,
which is still the standard work in English
on the Dada movement. It first appeared in
1951 and quickly became a kind of bible
for all those who were interested in Dada at
the time. One might even go so far as to say
that it was this publication that first aroused
any real enthusiasm amongst artists and
critics for Dada. 18 Motherwell was the first to
introduce a wider English-speaking public
and above all a large number of artists and
critics to Schwitters’ work and theory. In his
introduction to the anthology, and similarly in
the annotated bibliography by the librarian at
MoMA, Bernard Karpel, Schwitters occupies
more space than any other artist. A whole
chapter is given over to an English translation
of Schwitters’ programmatic text Merz of
1920, in which he formulated his Merz theory
for the first time. Another chapter contains
Schwitters’ text on ‘Theo van Doesburg and
Dada’, and in Georges Hugnet’s essay on the
history of the Dada movement Schwitters
again occupies a prominent position: “It
was Schwitters who gave Dada its final
impetus”. 19 The basic artistic approach that
Hugnet identified in Schwitters, struck a
nerve amongst the younger generation of
American artists: “Walking along the street,
he would pick up a piece of string, a fragment
of glass, the scattered princes of the waste
land, the elements of these infinitely inspiring
landscapes. At home, heaps of wooden junk,
tufts of horsehair, old rags, broken and
unrecognisable objects, provided him with
clippings from life and poetry, and constituted
his reserves. With these witnesses taken from
16
The Surrealist painter Roland Penrose acted as advisor for the
exhibition. He and the art-critic Herbert Read, who also knew
Peggy Guggenheim very well and helped her when she was planning
her museum, had been the main organisers of the Exhibition of
Twentieth Century German Art in the New Burlington Galleries
in London, in which Schwitters was represented and which Peggy
Guggenheim certainly saw. Herbert Read was one of the few who
stood up for Schwitters in England and had written an essay for the
Schwitters’ first one-man show in Jack Bilbo’s Modern Art Gallery
in London in 1944. The close friendship between Peggy Guggenheim
and Nelly van Doesburg provided another chance to become
acquainted with Schwitters’ work, in that Nelly van Doesburg had
long been a friend of Kurt Schwitters and owned numerous collages
by him; a further chance was through the Belgian Surrealist E. L.
T. Mesens, who had been a friend of Schwitters since 1927. With
his London Gallery Mesens was Peggy Guggenheim’s neighbour
in Cork Street and presented Schwitters’ second one-man show in
England in his gallery in 1950.
17
See H. H. Arnason, ‘On Robert Motherwell and his Early Work’,
in: Art International X, no. 1, 1966, pp. 17–35, here p. 23.
18
For instance Barbara Rose, ‘Dada Then and Now’, in:
Art International VII, no. 1, 1963, pp. 22–28, here p. 28.
19
Georges Hugnet, ‘The Dada Spirit in Painting’, in: Robert
Motherwell, The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, New York
1951, p. 162.
129

130
THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
the earth, he constructed sculptures and
objects which are among the most disturbing
products of his time. To the principle of the
object, he added a respect for life in the
form of dirt and putrefaction. […] Schwitters
suggested the irrational tastes that we know
from our dreams: spontaneity and the
acceptance of chance without choice.” 20
Apart from Motherwell’s anthology, at
that time there were scarcely any Englishlanguage
publications on Kurt Schwitters
or translations of his texts. Carola Giedion-
Welcker’s essay on Schwitters, which first
appeared in Weltwoche in 1947, and which was
published in the Magazine of Art as an obituary
in October 1948 with the title, ‘Schwitters:
or the Allusions of the Imagination’, was the
first extended, copiously illustrated text on
Schwitters to become available in the Englishspeaking
world. In addition there was also the
small pamphlet-catalogue produced for the
exhibition in the Pinacotheca Gallery in 1948,
with texts by Katherine S. Dreier, Naum Gabo
and Charmion Wiegand.
20
Ibid., pp. 163f. The text had been previously published in a very
slightly different version in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition
catalogue, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, 1936.
21
On Anne Ryan see: Anne Ryan Collages, Brooklyn Museum,
New York, 1974; Donald Windham, ‘Anne Ryan and her collages’,
in: Artnews, 73, no. 5, 1974, pp. 76–78; Anne Ryan. Collages from
Three Museums, Washburn Gallery, New York, 1991.
22
As quoted in: Painting and Sculpture from the Collection, Walker
Art Center, Minneapolis, 1990, p. 447.
23
Lee Hall, Betty Parsons. Artist, Dealer, Collector, New York 1991,
pp. 182f.
24
Laura de Coppet and Alan Jones, The Art Dealers, New York
1984, p. 23.
25
Peter Watson, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Castelli & Co. Der Aufstieg
des internationalen Kunstmarkts, Düsseldorf and elsewhere 1993,
p. 346.
26
On the history of the gallery see: Three Generations of Twentieth-Century
Art. The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection of the
Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modem Art, New York 1972,
pp. 210–230.
Even if the gallerist Rose Fried was
more of an enthusiastic, idealistic art-lover
than a successful business woman and artdealer,
nevertheless her exhibition made a
major impression on the New York public
and, as we know, on at least one artist: Anne
Ryan. 21 Born in New Jersey in 1889, Anne
Ryan was already 58 years old when she first
came into contact with Kurt Schwitters’ art.
As a self-taught artist it had been some time
before she started to explore print techniques,
especially wood-cuts. She moved in artistic
circles and knew Jackson Pollock, Barnet
Newman and Hans Hofmann, who supported
her in her work. However, she only arrived at
her own language of forms – which brought
her overnight recognition amongst the New
York avant-garde – after she had visited the
Schwitters exhibition in Rose Fried’s gallery.
Her daughter remembers that first visit to
the gallery: “Mother went from one collage
to another in a passion of delight. She knew
instantly and completely that she had found
her métier. And she was practically exalted.
She had a great capacity for joy but I never
saw her so consumed by it […] We went
home and before she put water on for supper,
she was at her work table making collages.
During the following weeks she visited the
Fried Gallery a couple of times […].” 22 In the
six years until her death in 1954, Anne Ryan
worked exclusively on collages. Her works
were valued highly, yet her success is largely
forgotten today. These small-format works,
mainly in fabric and paper, display a fine
feeling for materials combined with a sense
of structure and pictorial composition; they
show the influence of Cubism, of Paul Klee
and – above all – of Kurt Schwitters.
In the early to mid-1950s, there were
at least four exhibitions of Ryan’s collages
in the influential Betty Parsons Gallery in
New York: three one-woman shows (1950,
1954 and 1955) and a joint show with Lee
Krasner (1953). 23 The Betty Parsons Gallery
was one of the few galleries in New York to
specialise exclusively in contemporary art.
Parsons had good contacts amongst important

collectors and leading institutions for modern
art such as the Museum of Modern Art. She
was much respected by artists, particularly
since she was a working artist herself. Yet, just
like Rose Fried’s gallery, the Betty Parsons
Gallery never had the same commercial
success as the comparable galleries owned
by Sam Kootz, Leo Castelli and Sidney Janis.
Betty Parsons, looking back, commented that
when she opened her gallery in 1946, of the
fifteen or so galleries in New York at the time,
only three or four specialised exclusively in
contemporary art. 24 At the time in New York
there were only around fifty professional
artists, everyone knew everyone and they were
on familiar terms with one another. 25 People
talked about art with the European émigrés
amongst their numbers, and visited the few
exhibitions that showed the new, radical
works of the avant-garde. Kurt Schwitters was
by no means unknown in these circles.
In September 1948, Sidney Janis
opened his gallery space at 15 East 57th
Street – directly opposite the Betty Parsons
Gallery. 26 Thanks to the triumphant progress
of Abstract Expressionism Sidney Janis
established himself as an extremely successful
gallerist and art-dealer, since early on he had
managed to entice the most promising young
artists away from Betty Parsons, including
Jackson Pollock in 1952, Franz Kline and
Invitation to a preview of Schwitters’ exhibition
at the Sidney Janis Gallery, 1952
© Tate, London 2015
131

132
THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
Mark Rothko in 1953, and Robert Motherwell
the year after that. Sidney Janis’ practice was
to show these younger artists either together
with or alternately with established exponents
of Classical Modernism such as Fernand Léger
or Piet Mondrian, in order to break down the
wider public’s resistance to new art forms.
One of the modernists, whom he exhibited
very frequently in the years to come, was Kurt
Schwitters. Shortly after the latter’s death,
Janis had made contact with Edith Thomas,
Schwitters’ companion during the last years of
his life in England, and had acquired a large
number of works from her, either buying them
directly or taking them on commission. These
were predominantly collages from Schwitters’
late period in England, since the artist had
had to leave his early works and his large
Merz pictures behind in Lysaker and Hanover
when he fled to England. Thus the American
public was much more familiar than its
European counterpart with the late collages
from the ensembles on loan to MoMA from
Rose Fried and Edith Thomas. 27 In contrast to
the rediscovery of the Merz artist in post-war
Europe, which – largely due to the preferences
of Werner Schmalenbach and the artist’s son,
Ernst Schwitters – concentrated on the early
‘classical’ Merz drawings and pictures, there
27
For more detail see Karin Orchard, ‘>Meine Zeit wird kommen

he also designed the catalogue: a poster-sized
sheet of silk-paper, printed, and crumpled into
a ball, which then had to be retrieved from a
trash can. Schwitters’ work was on prominent
display in this exhibition: the catalogue lists
six of his works which were shown along with
publications and his Merz magazines.
One of the visitors at this exhibition was
Robert Rauschenberg. This visit is Robert
Rauschenberg’s earliest recorded encounter
with Schwitters’ œuvre. He, too, was one of
Betty Parsons’ artists and had his first oneman
show in her gallery, opposite Sidney
Janis’ rooms, in 1951. Rauschenberg is often
hailed as Schwitters’ greatest successor,
although some dismiss him as an imitator.
He himself later denied that Schwitters
had been a direct influence and claimed
that he had only become aware of the art
of the Dadaist after he had already evolved
his own style. In view of the immediate
proximity of the two galleries, and the small
number of artists, gallerists and critics in
New York amongst whom Rauschenberg
moved, and whose conversation would often
turn to Schwitters and Dadaism in those
days, this claim of ignorance is somewhat
unconvincing. Moreover, Schwitters was not
only the subject of four one-man shows in
the Sidney Janis Gallery, he was also present
in a whole variety of group shows. And in
addition to that, the gallery had extensive
storage space – even today it still owns over
forty collages – which any interested party
could have access to, so that by 1953 at the
latest, Rauschenberg will have had ample
opportunity to see works by Schwitters, with
the exception of the 1952 exhibition, because
at the time he was travelling in Italy with Cy
Twombly. At the same time, it is perfectly
possible that he could have visited the 1948
exhibition in the Pinacotheca when he spent
a few days in New York in February. 31 In an
interview in 1965, he recalled that on a visit
to a Schwitters exhibition it had felt “as if
the whole exhibition had been made just for
me”, 32 and, later on, that he had “found out
about collages because everyone was talking
about Schwitters and I wanted to know more
Leaflet for an exhibition entitled,
Selection of French Art at the Sidney Janis Gallery, 1955 (back cover)
© Tate, London 2015
133

134
THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
about him”. 33 He even bought some late
collages by Schwitters, as did Jasper Johns
and Cy Twombly.
On closer examination, the influence
of the Merz artist appears to be selfevident,
particularly when one compares
Rauschenberg’s early work from the 1950s,
his Red Paintings and his Combine Paintings
with Schwitters’ late works. Of course their
aims and solutions are different, for despite
their comparable use of waste and debris,
Rauschenberg has quite different artistic
intentions. His aim is to show that found objects
retain their everyday identity, even if they
become part of a work of art. Rauschenberg
operates in the realm between art and life, while
Schwitters wants to bridge the gap between art
and life. 34 All materials, even waste, seem to
the Dadaist to be suitable components in a
work of art. This transformation is the main
preoccupation of Merz.
“The waste of the world becomes my
art” – this quote from Schwitters served as
the motto for the first comprehensive book
on collage that was published by Harriet Janis
(the wife of Sidney Janis) and Rudi Blesh in
1962. This publication marked the highpoint
of Schwitters reception in the 1950s and
60s in the United States, for it is enhanced
with numerous illustrations of his work, his
writings are quoted to explain his theories
and his name is on practically every page. The
authors draw their critical investigation of
collage to a close with the following statement:
“Schwitters moved from dada to a prophecy
of this generation’s leap from anti-art’s social
and esthetic protest to the calm acceptance
of our harvest of junk as material for a truly
contemporary art – and let the chips of
meaning fall where they may. They use junk
as an act of moral and esthetic integrity, as
the only realistic course. Their intellectual
god is Marcel Duchamp who preceded dada,
then transcended its negative limitations;
their guide is Schwitters who heard the
mute eloquence of our waste.” 35 Due respect
is paid to the inventors of modern collage –
Picasso, Braque and Arp, but Schwitters takes
precedence as the true master of collage using
found objects.
In the critical assessment in the 1950s
and 1960s of the precursors and the progress
of post-war art, Schwitters was seen as the
equal of Marcel Duchamp. Often the two were
named in the same breath when it came to
identifying the most important influences
on art until well into the 1960s and 70s –
not to mention literature, sound poetry and
music. American artists and critics recognised
Schwitters’ achievements even if his unwieldy,
scarcely narrative abstraction meant that he
never attained the wide public acclaim of a
Picasso or Paul Klee. He is often described as
an ‘artist’s artist’, whose real impact came when
artists pursuing new directions – in Abstract
Expressionism, Neo-Dada and Pop Art – were
searching for role-models and inspiration, and
found a rich seam in Schwitters’ late work.
Unaltered reprint from the exhibition catalogue
“Aller Anfang ist Merz - Von Kurt Schwitters bis heute”,
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2000
p. 135-137 Letter from Katherine S. Dreier
to Kurt Schwitters, 16 July 1925.
Katherine S. Dreier Papers / Société Anonyme
archive. Yale Collection of American Literature,
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
33
Robert Rauschenberg in conversation with Barbara Rose, in: Robert
Rauschenberg et al., Kunst heute, no. 3, Cologne 1989, p. 59.
34
See Joachim Jäger, Das zivilisierte Bild. Robert Rauschenberg und
seine Combine Paintings der Jahre 1960 bis 1962, Klagenfurt and
Vienna 1999, pp. 52–63.
35
Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh, Collage. Personalities, Concepts,
Techniques, Philadelphia and New York 1962, p. 255.

135

THE ELOQUENCE OF WASTE· by Karin Orchard
136

137

138
How to look on Modern Art in America
by Ad Reinhardt, 1961
How to Look at Modern Art in America counts among the most famous illustrations
by American Abstract Expressionist Ad Reinhardt. First conceived for the journal PM
in 1946, Reinhardt created this family tree of modern art with a nod towards Alfred
J. Barr’s renowned diagram cover of his catalogue to the seminal 1936 exhibition
Cubism and Abstract Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The updated
version from 1961 was published in the summer issue of ARTnews.

139

140
KURT
SCHWITTERS:
I URGENTLY RECOMMEND THAT EVERYBODY
BUY THEIR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS NOW
Norman Rosenthal (2016)

141
All art of any significance comes from art
and will also continually generate new art. As
Kurt Schwitters wrote in an article dated 1940-
46, in somewhat broken English:
When I was born. 20.6.87, I was influenced
by Picasso to cry. When I could walk
and speak I still stood under Picasso’s
influence and said to my mother: “Tom”
or “Happening” meaning the entrances of
the canal under the street. 1
He continues, after invoking Matisse,
Mondrian, the Surrealists, Hans Arp, Di
Chirico, by claiming he “never stood under
the influence of Dadaism” and that rather, in
1919, he created Merz on the Leineriver (in his
home town of Hanover) ”under the influence of
Rembrandt”. 2 Arguably, the only work in this
exhibition that demonstrates the direct influence
of any other artist is a drawing made in 1918
called The Lonely One, which takes techniques
and motifs from Lyonel Feininger and Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner. Earlier, as a young man,
he had studied at the Dresden Arts Academy
and as late as 1915 painted competently in a
traditional manner redolent of Adolph Menzel
or Wilhelm Leibl. As with Max Beckmann,
the experience and knowledge of the horrors
of the First World War changed everything.
Subsequently, Schwitters was to become one
the twentieth century’s truest originals, whose
invention of collage sourced almost exclusively
from the detritus of everyday life – from bus
tickets to the torn pages of newspapers,
splintered wood salvaged from rubbish heaps,
shorelines or forests, to letters and numbers
always pregnant with poetic meaning and
implied sounds, like Cagean musical scores that
anticipate the American composer’s chance
operations. His is an art of the street and the
1
Kurt Schwitters, Eile ist des Witzes Weile: Eine Auswahl aus den
Texten, Reclam, Stuttgart 2009, p. 17.
2
Ibid.
Kurt Schwitters
Z 71 Der Einsame. (2)
1918
Charcoal on paper
32.4 x 23.3 cm
Galerie Gmurzynska
Lyonel Feininger, Cathedral, 1919
Title page for Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus
manifesto and program.
31,0 x 19,1 cm
© bpk / Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz /
László Tóth
WWI Image of soldiers
in a trench Asleep within
100 yards of Thiepval
Courtesy The National
Library of Scotland

KURT SCHWITTERS: I URGENTLY RECOMMEND THAT EVERYBODY BUY THEIR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS NOW· by Norman Rosenthal
world observed, yet it is forever subjectively
hermetic – an art that never allows the viewer
totally to unlock its secrets. At the time of his
death in January 1948 in the unlikely Lake
District town of Kendal in the north west of
England, Schwitters was all but unknown and
forgotten and in the words of Fred Uhlman, an
artist friend he’d met in the internment camp
on the Isle of Man, ”He died […] in poverty
trying to sell his collages for a pound apiece“. 3
But it seems Schwitters never doubted his own
importance as a significant artist of his time.
One of his first apologists in West
Germany after the Second World War was
the art historian and museum director Werner
Schmalenbach. Schmalenbach maintained
that Schwitters, unlike the largely Berlin-based
Dadaistic artists – whether Georg Grosz
or John Heartfield, not to mention his close
friend Richard Huelsenbeck or even his great
supporter Herwarth Walden, editor of the
avant-garde magazine and gallery Der Sturm –
saw art not as a political tool but as “a spiritual
function of Man, whose point is to release
him from the chaos of life (tragedy)” and that
“the subsuming of oneself in art approaches
divine service in freeing man of the cares of
everyday life!” 4 We are already anticipating
the first Merzbau that was to be his cathedral.
Ultimately, for Schwitters Merz is form. There is
no need to remind the reader of the origin of
the word Merz that arose out of the new world
full of optimism and destruction that engulfed
Europe, and most especially Germany, in
1919, and that became his unique trademark.
Nor in his biography was there any shortage
of melancholy and tragedy, even if in the years
between 1919 and 1933 Schwitters enjoyed
considerable fame in the world of Weimar
Germany.
3
Fred Uhlman, The Making of an Englishman, Victor Gollancz Ltd,
London 1960, p. 239.
4
Kurt Schwitters exhibition catalogue, galerie gmurzynska, Cologne
1978, p. 27.
142
He made hundreds, if not thousands,
of magnificent collages, large and small,
but surely his greatest achievements were in
his conception and realisation of the three
Merzbauten. The largest and most elaborate of
these was built in his house in an anonymous
street in Hanover, Waldhausenstrasse – later
destroyed by an inevitable bomb attack in
1943. He was to name it his Kathedrale des
Erotischen Elends – the Cathedral of Erotic
Misery. Cathedrals are essentially public
spaces but it’s unclear how many individuals,
aside from his immediate family, ever saw
this essentially secret interior. However, in the
famous exhibition staged by Alfred J. Barr at
the Museum of Modern Art in 1936, Fantastic
Art, Dada, Surrealism, two photographs of it
illustrated the catalogue. One, titled The Gold
Grotto (1925), the other, The Blue Window
(1933), indicates the continual work-in-progress
of this unique work. In fact, it seems that no less
than seven other photographs were exhibited
alongside full collages from 1920 and 1922.
Interior of Well’s Cathedral
© Historic England Archive

143
The extraordinary American collector Katherine
S. Dreier, who with Duchamp founded the
Société Anonyme, was one of Schwitters’
earliest patrons and collectors and had sought
him out in Hanover. As early as 1923 Dreier
reproduced his work in her book Western Art
and the New Era. Although she fails to mention
him in her text, he is, significantly, the last of her
chosen illustrations – as though art from Piero
della Francesca onwards could go no further.
There are, of course, contemporary
architects, like Frank Gehry and Zaha
Hadid whose use of endlessly surprising and
secretive angles owe much to the memory of
photographs such as those that survive. But the
house that Schwitters built was a container,
too, of cultural memories that evoke, like
true cathedrals, distant cultural pasts, and,
as with the Merzbau, an architectural future
with prophetic perspicacity. As an archetype
it also gives much material for any aspiring
psychologist. With this example it is possible to
dwell on the aesthetics of hoarding as a private
and public activity that characterises all sectors
of society, past, present and future. What are
places like the British Museum (public) or that
remarkable private edifice of Sir John Soane
other than cathedrals of erotic misery? Or the
Carceri of Piranesi? Are they not at best spaces
of melancholic nostalgia that cling hopelessly
to a past that constantly resonates lost time
within the span of human thought and culture?
What else are those tombs of ancient culture,
such as those of Ancient Egypt and China,
which enable the dead to take the material
necessities of life with them into another world?
What distinguishes a room containing voodoo
fetishes from someone’s collection of autographs
of the stars? Schwitters’ extraordinary insight
was to find beauty, intrinsic value and creative
potential not in luxurious objects that might fill
ancient tombs, or for that matter grand palaces
and museums, but in the detritus of his own
society.
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London
Courtesy Justin Bishop www.justinbishop.com.au
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
The gothic arch, ca. 1949-1950
from Carceri d’invenzione, 41.6 x 54.6 cm
Courtesy Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich

144
KURT SCHWITTERS: I URGENTLY RECOMMEND THAT EVERYBODY BUY THEIR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS NOW· by Norman Rosenthal
Having discovered Merz in a single
collage he found it could lead for himself, and
for others, to a sublime quality as evocative as
any that might be achieved in the traditional
art of painting. However, as he was to write
in 1922:
The philosophy of Merz can be applied
best of all to the category of architecture.
Merz means the using of old things for
the creation of the new work of art. As a
result, because of the difficulty of obtaining
material with which to build houses,
nothing remains other than to use the old
and to convert it to new ideas and concepts. 5
Might we claim Kurt Schwitters as the
discoverer of the modern ethic of recycling?
Recycling becomes for him its own aesthetic
category, even as he found a ‘day job’ in
Hanover as an innovative typographer.
Through international art magazines of the
time, in the 1920s he became part of the
Replica of antechamber of King Tutankhamen’s
tomb with royal funerary objects
© DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini/Getty
Images
world of Constructivism, maintaining close
contacts with De Stijl, especially with Theo van
Doesburg, the Bauhaus, not to mention the
Russian avant-garde. However, even in his most
abstract pieces of the 1920s he nearly always
found an appropriate collaging material out
of which to make Constructivist compositions,
such as Blau (1923-26), of primary coloured
nailed pieces of found wood. One could even
go as far to argue that he was, within his own
world, a one-person anti-Bauhaus artist. The
Bauhaus was, at its origin and through the art
of many of its prominent participants – Wassily
Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer and
Johannes Itten – a place of declared spiritual
content but it rapidly became a site of objective
purist rationality far removed from the erotic
desperation implicit in Merz. Indeed, the only
Merzbau partially to survive – that of Elterwater
in the Lake District – resembles in its imaginary
form nothing more or less than the inside of
a womb. To quote the writer Elizabeth Burns
Gamard:
Kurt Schwitters,
blau,1923-26,
Oil and wood on wood, nailed, 53 x 42.5 cm

145
What Schwitters describes in the
i-manifest is the anonymity and spiritual
generosity of (natural) love, the inherent
eroticism that governs all living systems.
The liberative energies of art mirror the
energies begotten by the sexual act, the
mark of eros. The Kathedrale is the site
in which the intuition of Schwitters’ art,
a living erotic system, is actualized. In
this sense, the artist is an anonymous
mediator, an individual responsible
for both the receiving and nursing of
intuitive impressions until the moment of
actualization, the material confluence of
creative energy, is realized. 6
In that sense every fragment of Schwitters,
each Merzbild, however small, is potentially
part of a Merzbau – an implicit total work of
art enabled through any heap of rubbish.
It is this that makes Schwitters one of the
most innovative and prophetic artists of the
first half of the twentieth century, someone
who saw in so many ways the route that the
art of the world was to take, leading to our
present day. For many artists who came to
prominence during the second half of the
twentieth century, Schwitters’ influence – either
by direct knowledge and influence or indirect
affinity – often hard to establish with any
degree of certainty – is legion and well known.
Even where the spirit of Marcel Duchamp is
perhaps too often invoked, it is at the very least
his ethic and character that is central. If that
spirit was felt firstly in Europe and America on
both sides of the Atlantic, it has extended in
recent decades throughout the entire world,
covering every continent, as the discipline of
art continues on its seemingly unstoppable
trajectory. It becomes almost arbitrary whom or
what to choose to invoke, in the first instance,
5
Harald Szeemann, Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk exhibition
catalogue, Zurich 1983, p.324.
6
Elizabeth Burns Gamard, Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau: The Cathedral
of Erotic Misery, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2000, p.117.
Louise Nevelson,
Sky Cathedral, 1958,
Assemblage: wood construction, painted black,
343.9 x 305.4 x 45.7cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA).
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ben Mildwoff.
© 2016. Digital image, The Museum of Modern
Art, New York/Scala, Florence
Rirkit Tiravanija,
Untitled (The air between the chain link piece and the broken
bicycle), 2005,
Glass and stainless-steel structure with transmitter; wood structure
with receiver and furniture; DVD player and two monitors; two
antennas; wallpaper
(installation view, Hugo Boss Prize, Guggenheim, New York)
Courtesy Gavin Brown’s enterprise New York/Rome

KURT SCHWITTERS: I URGENTLY RECOMMEND THAT EVERYBODY BUY THEIR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS NOW· by Norman Rosenthal
from Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns,
to Joseph Beuys or Dieter Roth, the worlds
of Nouveau Realisme and Fluxus in Europe,
English Pop Art as manifest by the work of
Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, not to
mention most of the greatest American Pop Art
stars such as Claes Oldenburg, Ed Kienholz,
John Chamberlain or, indeed, Andy Warhol
himself, whose factory and the activities that
took place within can be read as a kind of
open plan Merzbau.
An essentially throwaway society has
become evermore an essential source for artists
as they scour skips and convert the wastes of
an accelerated obsolescence of nature and
industrial life to create individual languages
and new mnemonic poetics out of broken pots,
dried sunflowers and ancient iron bedsteads that
in another world, before Kurt Schwitters, had
been the preserve of the rag and bone man.
Schwitters, like Einstein or Freud, opened a book
after which his subject of choice and the business
of seeing would never be the same again.
Certain artists have already been invoked and
others among his immediate successors include
Robert Motherwell with his collages that focus on
grissini or Gauloises packets, or Louise Nevelson
who, as far back as 1958, christened one of
her most ambitious pieces Sky Cathedral, which
consists of a black wall constructed of wooden
boxes stacked upright and seemingly filled with
a thousand and one fetishistic objects, mostly
found, glued inside. Nevelson went on to make
many more of these structures that Schwitters
would surely have recognised as an homage to
his own work.
To fast-forward to the world of the present,
the spirit of Schwitters, in all its multifarious
aspects, can be found everywhere. We can
feel him in those magnificent shimmering cloths
made by El Anatsui, who was born in Ghana
in 1944, made from thousands upon thousands
of aluminium bottle tops sourced from recycling
146
stations and sewn together with copper wire,
evoking for our time the great traditions
of Ghanaian cloth making, but equally, in
transformative environmental ways, all the spirits
of erotic misery that characterises our own time.
Another prominent artist one might mention here
is Rikrit Tiravanija whose relational art sometimes
involves audience participation along with
plastic cups, picnics or even artefacts from his
own apartment. His classic piece of 2005, The
Air Between the Chain Link Piece and the Broken
Bicycle, for all its obvious winking at Duchamp,
constructs two environments, one made of wood,
the other of glass, accompanied by poetic wall
texts that when looked at could not be conceived
of without reference to Merz and Merzbauten.
The same can be said to be true of Thomas
Hirschhorn, a declared admirer of Schwitters. It
still remains unclear whether the first Merzbau in
Hanover broke through the ceiling of his house.
Hirschhorn, though, in a recent piece writes of a
self-constructing kind of Merzbau he constructed
in a private gallery in Naples in 2013. Titled
Break Through, he allowed the ceiling of the
gallery to fall in on itself. The gallery, in itself
a functional space, became a subjective space
in which, to quote the artist, ”I have to raise my
head, I have to open my eyes wide and face
what I do not want to see. This is the logic, the
form and the mission of this sculpture.“
Another contemporary classic example
of a cathedral of erotic misery is the Haus U R
by Gregor Schneider that he exhibited to huge
acclaim in 2001 at the Venice Biennale, where
it was awarded the Golden Lion. Schneider
declared that the title of the piece merely relates
to where the house normally stood in his small
hometown of Rheydt in the lower Rhineland,
but U R invokes a whole German philosophical
world of beginnings, in both time and place, and
equally a primitive and primeval psychological
site that anyone who has experienced his house
will recognise as a Beuysian, if sinister, cathedral
of true erotic misery.

147
It is perhaps pertinently strange that
three more or less contemporary artists who
happen to carry the name ‘Rhoades/Rhodes’,
phonetically the same, are all Schwitterian, to
coin a perhaps not entirely happy adjective.
Jason Rhoades is remembered as an
extraordinary creator of blindingly bright neon
environments made of words. A friend of Paul
McCarthy and Mike Kelley, all were Los Angeles
artists – unimaginable without the example of
Schwitters. The same is true of two younger
American artists. Stephen G. Rhodes, whose art
installations construct labyrinthine spaces on a
grand scale that evoke American and European
philosophy and history. Davis Rhodes’ work,
in contrast with Stephen G. Rhodes’, is almost
minimalist. By cutting huge sheets of coloured
paper, which find their own form, he makes in
the process undeniably Merz-like spaces.
Ultimately, such lists of artists today could
go on indefinitely. Any browsing on the website
of any self-respecting contemporary art gallery
will reveal artists young and old, a majority,
or at least a substantial number, of whom
can be read as coming out of Schwitters. His
momentary, sudden discovery of Merz opened
a book that it seems will never be closed. As he
declared in that article of 1940-46:
One needs a medium. The best is, one
is his own medium [sic]. But don’t be
serious because seriousness belongs to
a passed time. This medium, called you
yourself will tell you to take absolutely
the wrong material. That is very good,
because only the wrong material used in
the wrong way, will give you right picture,
when you look at it from the right angle
[...] That is my confession I have to make
MERZ. 7
7
Kurt Schwitters, Eile ist des Witzes Weile: Eine Auswahl aus den
Texten, Reclam, Stuttgart 2009, p.17.
Stephen G. Rhodes,
Receding Mind: Circle of Shit, 2010,
Film installations.
Installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
June 19-September 26, 2010.
Davis Rhodes
Untitled, 2009,
Spray paint on vinyl,
243,8 x 121,9 cm

NORMAN ROSENTHAL
IN CONVERSATION WITH
DAMIEN HIRST
(24 May 2016)
Damien Hirst interviewed by Norman Rosenthal, London
148

NR: Tell me, Damien, when did you first come across Kurt Schwitters?
DH: I knew Robert Rauschenberg’s work when I was doing my foundation studies in Leeds.
That was, I don’t know, probably in the early 1980s. I was making collages, but I didn’t come
across Kurt Schwitters until later.
NR: What were the collages like?
DH: Well, I’ve always tried to paint but I never could because I couldn’t work out what to paint.
I’d be sitting in front of a blank canvas thinking do I do a figure, do I do a tree, do I do, what
do I do? I didn’t know what to do. I used to get lost. I got drop spot painting – I loved throwing
paint around.
NR: Were you drawing?
DH: Drawing was something controlled that I couldn’t do. The reason I tried making collages
was because I saw a show by Francis Davison at the Hayward Gallery in the early ‘80s, I think.
NR: I’m not familiar at all with his work.
DH: Francis Davison was married to the Suffolk painter Margaret Mellis and he made collages
on torn paper. On foundation I made a collage which was very like a Kurt Schwitters, but at this
point I’d not come across him, and I remember one of my tutors came and said you should have
a look at Kurt Schwitters. And I remember thinking he must be an American artist because he’s
called Kurt. I thought, you know, he was like Willem de Kooning. So for ages I thought he was
an American artist. I just thought that this work was amazing, inspirational. It helped me realize
that because I found it hard to create things I could re-arrange already existing elements – I had
a skill for that.
NR: Did you know about his connection to the Lake District and Newcastle?
DH: I found out later. Elma Thubron, my tutor at Goldsmiths, told me about it.
NR: Related to Harry Thubron.
DH: Harry’s wife. Elma taught me at Goldsmiths after Harry died.
NR: And Harry was a kind of collagist.
DH: Yes, he made collages. Harry taught Marcus Harvey, who was at Goldsmiths before me –
he was a, he’s a friend of mine from Leeds who I knew before I got into Goldsmiths. He told me
that Harry would come into college and rip up people’s art!
NR: Literally rip up people’s art?
DH: If somebody had been making a painting he’d tear it in half and stick it back together the
other way round and say: ‘It looks better now, work on it!’ That forced you to destroy what you
149

NORMAN ROSENTHAL IN CONVERSATION WITH DAMIEN HIRST
were working on, which in a way is a very Schwitterian thing to do. I’ve got a big collection of
Harry’s work now. I have thirty collages.
NR: I assume you have Schwitters in your collection?
DH: I’ve got a couple of works on paper, but not any constructions. I’d like to get more, but I
think they’re–
NR: –quite expensive.
DH: And the good ones are hard to find.
NR: I remember a place in West London, when I was a boy where you could buy them
for £50 each – maybe less. Fifty pounds was a lot of money, certainly for me in those
days. It was actually one of my first encounters with “real art”.
DH: Elma Thubron told me that she was once in Ambleside and she was walking around and
she saw the gate post ‘Cylinders‘, and she thought: ‘Oh my god, I remember this from the books.’
And she said she went in and looked around and met a kind of a farmer, and asked him whether
he has a work by Kurt Schwitters. And he said, ‘Oh yeah, I know.’ And he took her to a barn filled
with loads of equipment – farming stuff like hoes, forks, spades – and in the back of the barn,
with things leaning against it, was this huge Schwitters piece. The way she describes it makes it
sound amazing: there were low windows and there was shimmering green light because of the
grass outside. She said it was the most amazing thing discovering it on your own wandering
around in the Lake District. Richard Hamilton took it out shortly after that. It must have been
in the late ‘50s.
NR: So you only have two Schwitters pieces?
DH: I’ve got one really good one.
NR: Where did you find it?
DH: I can’t remember now – it was a long time ago. I’ve been looking for a construction really.
I know that Miuccia Prada has an amazing green one. I remember looking at Schwitters’ work
and thinking that I couldn’t work whether they’d looked new at one point or if they’d aged, or if
they had been created to look nostalgic. I’ve got some fake Schwitters as well.
NR: Yes? Where did you get these?
DH: On Ebay. I buy lots of fakes. I’ve also got lots of fake Damien Hirsts, which I sign. So is it
a fake, then?
NR: I’m sure there are lots of fake Schwitters. I’ve written an article now about Schwitters
in which I claim that since Rauschenberg, right down to the present, Schwitters is at least
150

as important as Marcel Duchamp.
DH: Duchamp is so important, but I think it’s a different thing. Maybe you can say that the
Merzbau is as important as the urinal, but I don’t think you can disentangle it so easily. Schwitters
never really left the picture plane and I always thought you needed to leave the picture plane.
NR: But he does use the the detritus of society, which is a big thing for art. When you,
Damien, use cigarette ash in a vitrine, for example, you’re working in a lineage with
Schwitters.
DH: When the sculpture starts crawling off the table and up the wall, all hell breaks loose.
Schwitters was definitely that guy. Also maybe his poetry is what endures too. All these things he
is bringing into play about language – this totally changes the world. I like the fact, too, that he
didn’t get accepted by the Surrealists.
NR: Aside from from Schwitters, Duchamp and Picasso, do you think that there is any
other artist in the first half of the 20th century who changed art? Who made possible so
much other art?
DH: I think you can’t imagine Jasper Johns’ beer cans without Schwitters. I think Pop Art came
out of Schwitters as well.
NR: When you’re making art, do you think about older artists at all?
DH: It’s impossible not to. I remember being at Goldsmiths and looking around at all the people
and thinking: We’ve got nothing in common. And then you realize that the world is so multifacetted
that every generation will have this feeling. When Ian Jeffrey wrote the essay for the
Freeze catalogue he called it ‘Platonic Tropics’ and I thought that it was a really a good way of
saying that you have all these people who think that they have things in common but actually
they have nothing in common. Schwitters’ work is heterogenous in that way. Every painting is
like a battle like between creation and destruction.
NR: Have you ever done an environment yourself?
DH: The fly piece, A Thousand Years (1990) is definitely Schwitters-inspired. When I moved
to London I found this old guy’s house, Mr. Barnes, and I made col-lages from stuff of his like
Schwitters’. Did you ever see these?
NR: No. This is long before Freeze?
DH: Before Goldmsiths. I got into Goldmsiths with one of the little collages – they were just on
display in the Tate St. Ives. And I remember there Basil Beattie said to me: These are great. You
really shouldn’t be in an art school, you should go get an exhibition. That really fucking threw
me. And then I thought: What am I doing here? And then I thought to throw it all away and
start again. And then Michael Craig-Martin came in during my first few months and said to me:
151

NORMAN ROSENTHAL IN CONVERSATION WITH DAMIEN HIRST
What are you doing?
You’re arranging objects on these found backboards, why don’t you get rid of the them to arrange
the objects on the wall? And then I did that and I thought it was an amazing breakthrough. And
then I realized that, maybe ten years before, Johnny LeKray had been doing it. And I thought,
fucking hell, I’m not advanced at all, someone did that major thing ten years ago. And that kind
of led to the medicine cabinet. I was totally against conceptual art. I hated it. I liked Schwitters
because he wasn’t this ‘50s abstraction, but this kind of image that was about how you feel. I
wanted browns and purples if I’m feeling somber and reds and yellows when I’m happy. I wanted
that emotional kind of art and then it didn’t work in the world of today.
NR: Schwitters and your work share this erotic aspect. You know he called the Merzbau
the Cathedral of Erotic Misery?
DH: Oh yeah, yeah, brilliant. To come back to my collages, I found the guy living next door
to me living in a squat. I could hear though the walls the guy next door to me and I then I
looked out of the window and he was pushing a shopping trolley around and collecting stuff and
bringing it back to the house, day in day out. One day I stopped hearing him so I went around
and I broke in. I got in and found two locked doors on the top floor and the rest of the house was
just ruined. About sixty years it had been in that state. Eventually we broke the doors down and
went in and collected sixty years of stuff, then I started collecting tools and ham-mers and paint
and string and started bringing it all back to my studio and that’s when I started making my
collages. Up there I found stuff he had collected that I had thrown out as well, like I found a tin
that had been run over by a car and-
NR: Why did he like all that stuff? The fetishistic aspect of it?
DH: I really got to know him – he was called Mr. Barnes. From the top of the room there were
piles to the ceiling, maybe a foot from the ceiling, and there was a little corridor through it,
and there was a bench near a foot pedal like a lay of turned wood and he had alarm clocks, a
clock collection, he was fixing the clocks, and it was chaos at the top and I went through it, and
when I got down to the table level, I found, like, a civilized man and I found, like, his letters
and his handwriting. At the top was where I found porn magazines from the seventies and he
had scribbled with red pen the vaginas and before that it was like Paris Match. Little pencil
lines drawn around the women, some of them dressed and drawn around the clothes. It was just
unbelievable. I got to know the guy and he was… I went through sixty years of his life and got
to know him.
NR: But he was still alive?
DH: No, he was rehoused by the council and the landlord didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
152

NR: So what happened to the house?
DH: A few weeks after I went around the council came around with two guys. They had big
shovels and smashed the windows out and shoved it all out the window. I went mad. It was
unbelievable, sixty years of existence and then gone in no time. It completely blew my mind.
And then I found it really difficult at Goldsmiths, when I got there, to kind of create anything
meaningful, because you just thought, that was it. That was the most meaningful thing. And then
the only thing that got me out of it was minimalism, because it went the opposite of that.
NR: So out of all this came your source to fill your collages?
DH: Yes. Well, and then I carried on collecting myself.
NR: Do you still collage?
DH: Organizing Freeze was a collage. I got all these existing elements, people’s art, buildings,
arrangeable on the walls.
NR: I think every exhibition is a kind of collage.
DH: Yes, it is. Meyer Vaisman once said to me, when I lived in New York for about eighteen
months, that collage was the greatest idea of the 20th century. There is so much going on in
the world – the collage lends itself to making a comment about the world. You know you take
fragments of the world and then you reconstruct another world, which is a mirror of the world.
It is the most direct and simplest way to do it.
NR: Do you still have all of your constructions from Mr Barnes’ junk?
DH: Yeah. I actually gave one to Rauschenberg. And then I bought it back of his estate after he
died. Let’s do a Merzbau.
NR: Let’s do one. Let’s do one here!
DH: Let’s do one with spots. A Merzbau with spots.
Interview conducted by Norman Rosenthal with the help of Jonathan White
153

Kurt Schwitters,
Merzbau,
Hanover 1933
Double
Bladed
Axe
Flavin Judd (2016)
154

“Imitation remains imitation. Imitation is weakness and error.” - KS
In the structure of society the artist holds a singular position: live within it, live with its strictures
but don’t follow them. The artist is to be free to create and not be restrained, make something that
is outside the society, outside the culture even if eventually it will be accepted by the culture. This
is true as long as the artist actually stays within the strictures of the society, if the artist ventures too
far out he or she will be ridiculed and attacked, or exiled.
After more than a decade of making art Kurt Schwitters started on his largest project: Merzbau.
In his house in Hanover Schwitters started by building a column, a free standing sculpture in the
center of his studio. The column was human height and embedded with objects in its plaster. Later
while looking at the column he noticed that it connected to the works and images on his studio
walls. He then connected these images to the column with string. As the column continued to
develop he connected the column to the walls and the ceiling until it made a cavernous structure.
He didn’t stop working when he had filled his entire studio, he continued and the Merzbau grew
from room to room in his suburban house, displacing paying tenants and requiring punched holes
in the floor until it took up half the house. Growing organically both in size and form Schwitters
invented a new art form from the conventions of his post Dada career of the twenties. Fourteen years
after he had started he had built his spiraling structure into the fabric of his house, winding up
from the basement to the attic as the art displaced people and took up rooms like an ever growing
family or organism.
The Merzbau was a negative space, filled with grottos and nooks with small sculptures, personal
effects and tokens of his life and friends, a self portrait in three dimensions, a biography written in
space. While the project started out as a Dadaist object it evolved to become a more organic work
with abstract and natural shapes that would later cover the earlier nooks and hiding places. In order
to walk into the Merzbau one had to follow a tight, curving hallway that lead to (in the original
155
Kurt Schwitters,
Merzbau,
Hanover 1933

oom at least) a central cavern. From there one could go up or down to further rooms, caverns
and grottos. The overall color was the white of the plaster with specks of other colors. The various
constructions housed within the plaster were everyday objects modified to disassociate them from
their normal use and the personal objects of his friends set in plaster like a visual phonebook or
trace of relationships. Schwitters took real objects from the world and cast them within his work,
distancing them from their everydayness and connecting them to each other. For Schwitters the
Merzbau was an interconnected web of relations, each object or grotto influencing and informing
the next, creating an overall universe that one had to explore. The work was larger than the visitor
could take in and more complex than simply an object in a room. In this way Schwitters used his
history, his connections and relationships to make his own culture, a foreign culture, one that
would be denounced by the government and the society and even some of his friends. The Merzbau
was his way of dealing with a society that didn’t know what to do with him and a life that didn’t
make sense, he made an antidote.
Double Bladed Axe · by Flavin Judd
Judd doesn’t seem to have any relation to Schwitters or his project. Don’s works are a different
escape route, a different response to the cultural environment, one that seems completely at odds
with the Merzbau or collages. What could Don do with cigarette butts, toy dolls, bottle caps and
scraps of advertisements? If the artist within the society is the structure, the framework, then the
work itself is the details, the creation within that structure. In this way Judd and Schwitters are the
same. They each took the cultures that they inhabited and made something contrary to that culture,
they made their own out of themselves. In Don’s case it is the combination of the art, furniture,
architecture and design that make up his life’s work. This work was produced over thirty five years
and has a certain quality that connects it all together. For Don the art had to stand as works in
themselves, works that were like pebbles on the beach, something in themselves and not products
or reactions to the prevailing culture. While this is the opposite of Schwitters’ accumulation of his
surroundings in his artwork it is similar in that they each made something that emphatically didn’t
exist before. Not only did both Don’s work and the Merzbau not exist but they were unimaginable
2nd Floor, 101 Spring Street, New
York, NY featuring Kurt Schwitters,
Auwiese, 1920, newspaper and
block paper collage in situ
© Judd Foundation
Courtesy Judd Foundation Archives
156

Kurt Schwitters,
Auwiese, 1920,
newspaper and block
paper collage
© Judd Foundation
Courtesy Judd
Foundation Archives
before each artist made them. Schwitters gathered the tokens of his life, the refuse, the castaways,
everything that he could find of value and turned them into a cathedral, Don threw everything away
and made a different kind of cathedral, one of space and color and given facts.
The two artists came from entirely different directions to make their worlds the way they wanted,
they each made a culture which in course, changed the greater culture. Within the society, within the
banality of what was given them they made the extraordinary.
For Don’s work almost all has been saved: there is 101 Spring Street in New York, the spaces
in Marfa, Texas, even three remote ranch houses which echo Schwitters’ exile houses in Norway and
Great Britain. In the 1970’s and 1980’s Don fought hard for his art, realizing that it was up to him to
make sure it was still around when he was gone. Part of this concern was the history of prior artists
and what happened to their work, Schwitters is a true example of how delicate artwork and culture
really is. His enormous creation in Hanover was destroyed by an Allied bombing raid in October
1943 and subsequent versions of the Merzbau would also be destroyed or only saved piecemeal
years after they were constructed. In the last year of his life Schwitters had started on a new version
of the Merzbau but he never lived to complete it.
For Don the criterion of art was that it had to be good and for him there was no such thing
as minimalism. Probably for Schwitters the various labels that were applied to him didn’t matter
either as labels are a society’s way of saying it doesn’t understand new work. Without the labels
they are connected by their quality, something Don recognized. Hanging on the top floor of Judd
Foundation’s 101 Spring Street is the Schwitters collage that Don bought and installed. The small
Schwitters piece at 101 Spring Street hangs beautifully with an Arp and a Stuart Davis and is lit by
the glow of a Dan Flavin, I think he would have appreciated the location. 101 Spring Street only has
the work of sixteen artists within it, Schwitters is one of them.
157

Clare Elliott
This chronology gives a brief overview of Kurt Schwitters’s
life and career with a special concentration on events
relating to the reception of his art in the United States. For
a more comprehensive biography, see Karin Orchard and
Isabel Schulz, Kurt Schwitters: Catalogue Raisonné, the
first volume of which is a key source of this chronology,
together with the provenance and exhibition information
in all three volumes. Other sources consulted include, in
order of relative importance, correspondence in the Kurt
Schwitters Archiv, Sprengel Museum Hannover; The
Société Anonyme: Modernism for America, ed. Jennifer
R. Gross, 2006; Dada in the Collection of The Museum
of Modern Art, Anne Umland and Adrian Sudhalter,
2008; Kurt Schwitters, John Elderfield, 1985; and Kurt
Schwitters, Werner Schmalenbach, 1967 (English ed.).
1887
Curt “Kurt” Hermann Eduard Carl Julius Schwitters
is born on June 20 in Hanover, a small city in the
Lower Saxony region of Germany. His parents, Eduard
and Henriette (née Beckemeyer) Schwitters, own a
prosperous clothing store.
In the first few years of Kurt Schwitters’s life, his family
moves several times within Hanover. In 1901 they
settle permanently at 5 Waldhausstrasse (renamed
Waldhausenstrasse in 1907).
1908 -14
Schwitters begins to study art and write poetry.
He attends various art schools: the Kunstgewerbeschule
in Hanover in 1908—9; the Berliner Akademie der Künste
in 1911, where he is expelled as “untalented” after a
four-week probationary period; and Königlich Sächsische
Akademie der Künste in Dresden between 1909 and
1914. While in Dresden he paints in conservative,
academic, and eventually impressionistic styles.
In the spring of 1911, Schwitters’s work is rejected by
the Kunstgenossenschaft Hannover, but he is included
in their August exhibition. Two years later, his work is
shown for the first time in the large annual exhibition
“Grosse Kunstausstellung” February—May 1913, at the
Hannover Kunstverein, and the annual autumn exhibition
of local artists in September—October. He will exhibit
regularly at the Kunstverein until 1934.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
on June 28, 1914, brings about World War I. Germany
declares war on Russia and France. Schwitters returns
to Hanover.
1915
Schwitters and his first cousin Wilhelmine “Helma”
Eilerdine Gerhardine Friederike Fischer marry on October
5. They move into a flat in 5 Waldhausenstrasse, where
Schwitters also sets up a studio. The couple goes on
to have two sons: Gerd Schwitters, born September
9, 1916, who dies only eight days later, and Ernst
Schwitters, born November 16, 1918.
1917
Schwitters exhibits for the first time at the Kestner
Gesellschaft, Hanover, in May—June 1917. Established
the year before by Paul Erich Küppers, the Kestner
Gesellschaft brings diverse avant-garde artists to the
relatively provincial Hanover, exposing Schwitters to a
variety of new artistic styles. He begins painting and
drawing in an Expressionist style and his work becomes
increasingly abstract. Also in this year, Schwitters meets
Christof Spengemann a critic journalist, and publisher,
with whom he becomes a lasting friend, Spengemann
introduces Schwitters to key players in Hanover’s literary
circles.
In March, Schwitters is drafted into the German army,
Reichs-lnfanterieregiment 73, but because he suffers
from epilepsy, he is declared unfit for service. Beginning
in June he performs military service as a draftsman in
the WülfeI ironworks in Hanover until November 1918.
1918
Schwitters meets artist and art historian Kate Steinitz,
with whom he will collaborate on several projects and
remain friends throughout his life. When she moves
to California in 1942, Steinitz will play a key role in
introducing Schwitters’s work to the West Coast of the
United States.
Schwitters joins the Hannoversche Secession, a group
of local artists who had established themselves the
previous June in opposition to the conservative Hannover
Kunstverein. He participates in their first exhibition at the
Kestner Gesellschaft.
In June, Herwarth Walden includes Schwitters’s work for
the first time in his famed Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin.
Established in 1913, the gallery, known as the primary
sponsor of German Expressionism, was the focal point
of the Berlin avant-garde for more than a decade. By
1918 the activities include art classes, lectures, and the
publication of books and portfolios; its multi-disciplinary
approach influences the development of Schwitters’s
own thinking about art. Schwitters will perform and
exhibit regularly at Galerie Der Sturm until 1928; he
makes numerous contributions to the journal Der Sturm
from 1919 to 1928.
In Berlin, Schwitters meets artists Hans Arp, Raoul
CHRONOLOGY
159

Hausmann, and Hannah Höch, all of whom become his
lifelong friends.
Schwitters produces collages of discarded paper for
the first time and soon after, his first assemblages
incorporating a variety of small, found objects into his
compositions. He invents the term “Merz” (according to
the artist, from Kommerz, or “commerce”) to describe
his art. He eventually extends the principles of collage
composition and the designation “Merz” to all his
activities: graphic design, writing, and performance.
Despite breaking new ground with his abstract, collagebased
oeuvre, Schwitters will continue to produce
figurative works and landscapes in a traditional figurative
style throughout his life.
On November 11 an armistice signals the official end of
the First World War. The following June, Germany signs
the Treaty of Versailles, agreeing to reparations that will
bankrupt the country’s economy.
1919
Schwitters becomes a member of the artists association
Internationale Vereinigung von Expressionisten, Kubisten
und Futuristen, or IVEKF. At the same time, he becomes
increasingly aware of the radical Dada movement.
Launched in Zurich, Dadaism soon took root in several
cities internationally, most notably for Schwitters in
Berlin. In May he meets Dada writer Richard Huelsenbeck
in Berlin and shortly after writes to Tristan Tzara in Zurich
expressing his interest in the latter’s Dada publications.
Schwitters also begins a series of Dadaist watercolors
and produces rubber-stamp drawings and graphic prints.
Despite his active engagement with prominent Dadaists,
he is officially rejected by the group, which deems him
too bourgeois, in part because he is associated with the
Galerie Der Sturm.
Through the summer and early fall, Schwitters’s work
is shown in a number of group exhibitions outside
Hanover, including one at the Jenaer Kunstverein, Jena
(May—June); at the Galerie Emil Richter and the Neue
Vereinigung für Kunst, Dresden (June—July); at the
Galerie Der Sturm, Berlin, where he exhibits the Merz
pictures for the first time (July); and at the Kunstsalon
Rembrandt in Zurich (July—September).
In July, Schwitters publishes an essay explaining the
concept of Merz, and the Dadaist love poem “An Anna
Blume” (To Eve Blossom) in Der Sturm, no. 4; in October
he publishes “1 Merzbühne’ (1 The Merz Stage) in Sturm-
Bühne, Jahrbuch des Theaters der Expressionisten (no.
8). At the end of the year Paul Steegemann publishes
the book Anna Blume. Dichtungen (Eve Blossom,
Poetry), which contains a collection of prose and poetry,
including “An Anna Blume.” The poem is soon translated
into several languages and earns Schwitters instant
notoriety in Germany and internationally.
Between 1919 and 1924, Schwitters publishes (in
addition to his Merz magazine founded in 1923) four
volumes of poetry and prose and numerous poems, and
he responds to harsh criticism of his work in strident
and often hilarious texts he calls “Tran” (from Lebertran,
meaning cod-liver oil), which are published in a variety of
periodicals.
1920
Schwitters regularly travels to Berlin, where he recites
poetry at the Galerie Der Sturm for the first time on May
5. He meets artist George Grosz and continues to be
in contact with the Dada artists there. He also makes
a trip to Cologne, where he becomes acquainted with
writer Michel Seuphor and artist Max Ernst. Ernst makes
a return visit to Hanover later in the year.
At the Galerie Der Strum, Schwitters meets collector
Katherine S. Dreier, who with artists Marcel Duchamp
and Man Ray the same year found the Société Anonyme
as the first organization in the United States to focus
exclusively on contemporary art. Of German descent and
with strong ties to Berlin and particularly the Galerie Der
Sturm, Dreier develops close friendships with Schwitters
and his wife, Helma, with whom she thereafter
corresponds frequently. Dreier is not only instrumental
in introducing Schwitters’s work to the United States
but also provides needed financial assistance to the
Schwitterses during the 1920s and 1930s.
“Fifth Exhibition of the Société Anonyme.” Galleries of
the Société Anonyme, New York, November 1-December
15, includes works by Schwitters in his first exhibition in
the United States. He is also included in exhibitions in
Darmstadt, Dresden, and Rome.
Several publications feature images of Schwitters’s
Merz work together with descriptions of his studio:
Bernhard Gröttrup, “Ein Besuch bei Anna Blume,”
Die Pille; Eine aktuelle, kritische, witzige, freche,
unparteiische hannoversche Wochenzeitschrift (no. 7);
and Alfred Dudelsack, “Kuwitters: Bei Schwitters,” in the
supplement of Braunschweiger Illustrierte Woche (no. 5).
1921
Schwitters’s essay “Merz” (written in December 1920)
and photographs of several of his Merz works are
published in the Munich-based magazine Der Ararat (no.
1) edited by Hans Goltz. Exiled Hungarian poet Lajos
Kassak devotes a three-page spread of his periodical
MA (Today) to Schwitters’s work, including a Hungarian
160

translation of “An Anna Blume” and photographs of
several artworks.
“Eighth Exhibition of the Société Anonyme,” Galleries
of the Société Anonyme, New York, March 15—April 12,
includes work by Schwitters.
In April, Schwitters realizes his first solo exhibition at
the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin (“96. Austellung. Kurt
Schwitters. Merzbilder. Merzzeichnung. Gesamtschau”).
The selection of seventy works provides a comprehensive
overview of Schwitters’s Merz works.
From May through July, Schwitters travels to Dresden,
Erfurt, Weimar, and Leipzig for poetry recitals. In July
his poems appear in the Dutch journal De Stijl edited by
Theo van Doesburg. Schwitters and Van Doesburg meet
later that summer.
Kurt and Helma Schwitters, together with Raoul
Hausmann and Hannah Höch, undertake a trip they call the
“Anti-Dada-Merz-Reise” to Prague in August-September,
which culminates in an evening of performances
staged in the Saal Urania on September 6. Inspired by
Hausmann’s sound poem “fmsbw,” Schwitters begins
work on his “Ursonate” (Sonata in Primordial Sounds),
1923-33. Expanded over a period of ten years, the
“Ursonate” eventually would grow into a forty-minute
sound poem organized into four movements with a
prelude and finale. Schwitters considers the “Ursonate,”
like the Merzbau (Merz Construction) in Hanover, to be a
defining life’s work,
1922
During a chaotic year in Germany, owing to the rapid
devaluation of the German mark and the resulting
hyperinflation, Schwitters produces his first sound poems
and continues to publish poems, manifestos, and articles.
Images of works by Schwitters appear in two important
books on modern art: Die Kunst der Gegenwart: Die Sechs
Bücher der Kunst, edited by Paul Ferdinand Schmidt, and
Buch Neuer Künstler, edited by
Lajos Kassák and László Moholy-Nagy.
In September, Van Doesburg, Arp, and Tzara join Schwitters
for evenings of Dada recitals in Jena, Weimar, and finally
Hanover, where they are joined by Hausmann and Höch.
Constructivist artist El Lissitzky attends the Hanover
performance, which takes place September 30 at the
Galerie von Garvens. Schwitters also travels to Berlin to
visit the “Erste Russische Austellung” at the Galerie van
Diemen, which introduces Western European audiences
to recent developments in Russian art. For the next several
years, Schwitters’s work and his interest in graphic design
and typography develop from his increasing contact with
Constructivists such as Van Doesburg and Lissitzky.
Dreier purchases one of Schwitters’s first collages, Merz
19, 1920 (Yale University Art Gallery), from the Galerie
Der Sturm.
1923
Schwitters publishes the first issue of his journal Merz
in January. Issues of Merz are produced at irregular
intervals and in a variety of formats, including magazine,
book, and folio, until 1932. Schwitters not only uses Merz
as a platform for his own writings, graphic design, and
artworks but also publishes articles by a wide variety of
avant-garde artists.
Also in January, Schwitters begins a four-month trip of
the Netherlands, the “Dada Tornee,” with Theo and Nelly
van Doesburg and Vilmos Huszár. He meets the Dutch
designer Piet Zwart, who greatly influences Schwitters’s
interest in modern typography.
In March, Schwitters’s work is shown alongside that
of Oskar Schlemmer, Moholy-Nagy, Lissitzky, and Max
Burchartz in an exhibition of Constructivist art at the
Galerie Emil Richter, Dresden.
Hausmann and Schwitters perform a Merz matinee in
the Konzerthaus Tivoli in Hanover on December 30, for
which Lissitzky designs a poster.
Schwitters presumably begins work on two Merzsäulen
(Merz Columns), which become the foundations of his
later Hanover Merzbau.
1924
Schwitters establishes an advertising office called Merz-
Werbezentrale through which he receives an increasing
number of commissions to design typography over the
next few years. Schwitters’s work is included in the
influential exhibition “Contimporanul Prima expozitie
internationala” in Bucharest, and Herwarth Walden
includes reproductions of Das Arbeiterbild (The Worker
Picture), 1919 (Moderna Museet, Stockholm), and Franz
Müller’s Drahtfrühling (Franz Müller’s Wire Springtime),
1919 (lost), in the revised edition of his Einblick in Kunst
(1st ed., 1917).
Between April and July, Schwitters and Lissitzky collaborate
on Merz 8/9 Nasci (Merz 8/9 Becoming). The double
issue places illustrations by Constructivist artists Kazimir
Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, and Piet Mondrian alongside
drawings by Dada artists Man Ray and Hans Arp.
In September, Schwitters’s designs for a Merz theater,
Normalbühne Merz (Normal Merzstage) are included
in an exhibition of theater design, “Internationale
Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik” in Vienna, which
travels to Paris and New York.
CHRONOLOGY
161

In November, Schwitters publishes Merz 11. Typoreklame,
an issue devoted to advertising, typography, and graphic
design. It includes an essay by Schwitters, “Thesen über
Typographie” (Theories about Typography), describing
the importance of simple modern fonts and wellbalanced
design.
At the end of the year Schwitters and Steinitz establish
a publishing house called Apossverlag. They produce
the fairy tales Hahnepeter. Die Märchen vom Paradies
(Peter the Rooster, The Fairy Tale about Paradise) and
Die Scheuche (The Scarecrow), which are published
the following year. They also found the series “Neue
Architektur” (New Architecture) and publish as its
first (and last) volume, Grosstadtbauten by Ludwig
Hilberseimer.
1925
A photo of Schwitters’s studio as it appeared in 1920 (a
forerunner of the Hanover Merzbau) is published in the
book Die Kunstismen by Lissitzky and Arp.
Merz 13 Merz—Grammophonplatte (Merz—Phonograph
Record) is published. It includes a recording of the
scherzo from Schwitters’s “Ursonate.” On February 14
he performs the entire “Ursonate” publicly for the first
time at a recital, which takes place in Potsdam in a
private home.
Schwitters continues to publish (mostly grotesques and
criticism), perform, and exhibit, mainly in Germany.
1926
In April, in preparation for the Société Anonyme’s
upcoming “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” Dreier
visits Schwitters at his studio in Hanover. She attends a
recital of his work at the Bauhaus in Dessau, and the pair
takes a weeklong trip to the Netherlands. The exhibition
opens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, November
19, and travels to Anderson Galleries, New York, January
25—February 5, 1927; Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, New
York, February 25—March 20, 1927; Toronto Art Gallery,
April 24, 1927. It includes eleven works by Schwitters in
Brooklyn but only seven elsewhere.
Later in the year, Schwitters makes trips to Berlin,
Dresden, and Prague. In December he participates in the
opening ceremonies of the Bauhaus building in Dessau.
1927
Schwitters organizes a major retrospective exhibition of
his work titled “Grosse Merzausstellung 1927”, which
travels to several German cites, including Wiesbaden,
Bochum, and Barmen.
In January, ten collages by Schwitters are included in
the exhibition “Constructivist Drawings and Posters,”
University of California, Los Angeles. The presentation is
organized by artist and dealer Galka Scheyer. Scheyer, a
native of Germany, had immigrated to the United States
in 1924; in 1925 she moved to San Francisco and later
settled permanently in Los Angeles. From California, she
promoted German artists, primarily Lyonel Feininger,
Alexei Jawlensky, Paul Klee, and Oscar Schlemmer, until
her death in 1945. Her collection, including works by Kurt
Schwitters, was donated to the Norton Simon Museum,
Pasadena, California.
On March 12, with Carl Buchheister, Rudolf Jahns,
Hans Nitzschke, and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart,
Schwitters establishes die abstrakten hannover, a
subdivision of the Berlin artists’ group Die Abstrakten,
Internationale Vereinigung der Expressionisten,
Futuristen, Kubisten und Konstruktivisten e. v. The group
disbands in 1931.
Schwitters makes a monthlong visit to France and
Belgium in April that includes a performance of the
“Ursonate” at the gallery Le sacre du printemps, Paris.
While in Paris, he meets artists Tristan Tzara, André
Breton, and E.L.T. Mesens; he will make annual trips to
Paris through 1931.
Schwitters’s play Schattenspiel (Shadow Game), ca.
1925, is performed in an avant-garde theater in Prague
on May 8; Schwitters attends the premiere.
An English translation by Myrtle Klein of “An Anna
Blume” titled “Anna Blossom Has Wheels” appears in
the June issue of Transition (no. 3), an American literary
journal edited by Eugene Jonas.
Schwitters collaborates with Steinitz on a libretto for the
grotesque opera Der Zusammenstoss (The Collision), for
which they win second prize at a competition in Vienna,
August 1928.
Schwitters meets with Robert Michel, Willi Baumeister,
Jan Tschichold, Walter Dexel, Friedrich Vordemberge-
Gildewart, César Domela, and László Moholy-Nagy to
establish an association of commercial artists called ring
neue werbegestalter.
1928
Schwitters travels to Rome, Naples, and Sicily for five
weeks as a guest student at the secondary school
Technische Hochschule in Hanover.
“A Small Intimate Exhibition Arranged by the Société
Anonyme,” Arts Council Gallery at the Barbizon Hotel,
New York, February 20—March 3, includes work by
162

Schwitters. Dreier and composer lmre Weisshaus
(pseudonym Paul Arma) perform Schwitters’s sound
poems at a recital in Dreier’s home in New York,
November 28.
Schwitters contributes an essay titled “Gestaltende
Typographie” (Constructive Typography) to the
September issue of Der Sturm 19, no. 6, 265—69. In
addition, Schwitters and Steinitz are commissioned to
design a brochure for the Test der Technik,” which takes
place in Hanover on December 8.
1929
Schwitters joins the artist’s group dedicated to
abstraction Cercle et Carré, Paris, founded by Joaquin
Torres-Garcia and Michel Seuphor; members include
Le Corbusier, Piet Mondrian, and Wassily Kandinsky.
Schwitters’s work is included in the landmark “Premiere
exposition internationale du groupe Cercle et Carré,”
Galerie 23, Paris, April 1930.
In the spring, Dreier visits Schwitters again in Hanover,
this time with Duchamp.
In July, Helma and Kurt Schwitters make their first
journey to Scandinavia; until 1936, Schwitters will make
annual summer trips to Norway, where he earns money
by selling traditional landscape paintings and occasional
portraits.
Schwitters designs all of the ephemera for the October
inauguration of the first apartments built for the
Dammerstock-Siedlung, an architectural development
project in Karlsruhe headed by Walter Gropius, founder
of the Bauhaus school.
In October the US stock market crashes, signaling the
beginning of a worldwide economic depression. The art
market likewise collapses.
1930
In the early 1930’s, Schwitters begins working on
an ongoing room-size installation of built and found
architectural and collage elements meant to be seen as
a single artwork, which in 1933 he christens Merzbau.
Initially occupying only his studio, the Merzbau eventually
grows to take over several rooms of the family’s residence.
Schwitters continues to work on the Merzbau until he
leaves Hanover in January 1937. The work is destroyed by
Allied bombs on October 8 and 9, 1943.
Schwitters publishes the brochure “Die neue Gestaltung
in der Typographie” (New Design in Typography).
Schwitters joins the PEN Club, an English literary society
founded in London in 1921, and establishes an author’s
group in Hanover, “Ring Hannoverscher Schriftsteller”
with Christof Spengemann and Carl Credé.
Dreier visits Schwitters again in Hanover on March 30;
she purchases his Relief mit rotem Segment (Relief with
Red Segment), 1927.
In what is likely his last public performance in Germany,
Schwitters reads several works, including “An Anna
Blume” and “Schacko,” on December 21 at “Künstler in
Front” in the Capitol-Hochhaus, Hanover.
1931
Schwitters is elected an Honorary President of the
Société Anonyme. Five of his works are included in a show
organized by the Société Anonyme, “An International
Exhibition Illustrating the Most Recent Development in
Abstract Art: Special Exhibition Arranged in Honor of the
Opening of the New Building of the New School,” at the
New School for Social Research, New York, January 1—
February 2. The exhibition travels to Albright Art Gallery,
Buffalo, New York, February 18—March 8.
Franz Müller’s Wire Springtime, Merzbild 9 b das grosse
lchbild (Merz Picture 9 b The Great I Picture), 1919
(Museum Ludwig, Cologne), and Albert Finzlerbild
(Albert Finzler Picture), 1926 (Sprengel Museum
Hannover, loan from Finanz Informatik), are reproduced
in the third edition of Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (Art
of the Twentieth Century) by Carl Einstein.
Schwitters joins Paris-based “abstraction-création,” an
artists’ association formed in opposition to Surrealism
that grew out of the short-lived Cercle et Carré. The
group’s journal publishes images of the Hanover
Merzbau and other works by Schwitters between 1932
and 1934.
1932
The Hannover Kunstverein includes Schwitters in their
one-hundredth anniversary exhibition, March—April.
Schwitters’s “Ursonate” is published as Merz 24;
with typography by Jan Tschichold. Schwitters records
the poems ‘Scherzo” and “An Anna Blume” for the
broadcaster Süddeutsche Rundfunk AG, Stuttgart, May 5.
Helma and Kurt Schwitters visit Guernsey, the Channel
Islands; Brittany, France; and Spain, Morocco, and Italy.
1933
In January, Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor and
CHRONOLOGY
163

several weeks later becomes dictator of Germany.
As the political situation in Germany becomes
increasingly difficult for avant-garde artists, Schwitters
begins withdrawing from public appearances and
exhibitions, focusing instead on the Merzbau.
Reproductions of Schwitters’s works are included in
the exhibition “Novembergeist: Kunst im Dienste der
Zersetzung” (November Spirit: Art in the Service of
Moral Corruption), June—September 1933, Stuttgart
and Bielefeld, organized by the National Socialists with
the intent to ridicule modern art and artists.
1934
Schwitters meets Tommaso Marinetti, founder of
Futurism, at the Berlin opening of the exhibition
“Aeropittura,” on March 28.
In the summer Schwitters begins a second Merz
construction, Hütte auf Hjertøya (Cottage on Hjertøya),
1932—39, in a primitive hut on the island of Hjertøya in
Moldefjord, Norway.
The last presentation of Schwitters’s work in Nazicontrolled
Germany (other than in derogatory exhibitions
organized by the government), is the annual autumn
“Herbstausstellung Hannoverscher Künstler” at the
Hannover Kunstverein, October—November.
Mz 199, 1921 (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York), is included in “Modern Works of Art: Fifth
Anniversary Exhibition,” November19, 1934—January
20, 1935, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, marking
the first time Schwitters’s work was on view there.
1935
L Merzbild L3 (Das Merzbild) [L Merz Picture L3 (The
Merz Picture)], 1919, and Ringbild (Ring Picture), 1920/21,
are confiscated from the Stadtmuseum Dresden and put
into the first “Entartete Kunst,” an exhibition of modern
art deemed degenerate (entartete) by the National
Socialists. The first such exhibition began in Dresden
in September1933 and ended in Frankfurt, September
1936; a second “Entartete Kunst” tours Germany from
July 18, 1937, until April 20, 1941. Both works are now
lost and presumed destroyed.
In May, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., director of the Museum of
Modern Art, New York, visits the Schwitterses’ home
in Hanover. Barr had most likely been introduced to
the artist’s work through his close association with
Dreier. Although Schwitters is in Norway, Barr views the
Merzbau. A few months later, while he is in Paris, Barr
purchases Reichardt-Schwertschlag Father Christmas,
1922, from the poet Paul Eluard for the museum’s
collection. The next year in Berlin he purchases Drawing
A 2 House. [Hansi], 1918, and Mz. 379. Potsdamer, also
for the museum’s collection, where they alI three remain
today.
By this time, American collector Albert Eugene Gallatin
had purchased two works by Schwitters, Merzbild
20a (Bild Streichholz—Hosenknopf) (Merz Picture 20a
(Picture Match—Trouser—Button)], 1919, and Untitled
(Merz Construction, Top), ca. 1923—26. Parts of
Gallatin’s collection of modern art were on continuous
view in New York at his Gallery of Living Art (later the
Museum of Living Art) from 1927 to 1936. In 1942 the
collection, including the two works noted above, moved
to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it remains.
1936
Alfred Barr places Schwitters’s works in two Museum
of Modern Art exhibitions: six in ‘Cubism and Abstract
Art,” March 2—April 19, and four in “Fantastic Art,
Dada, Surrealism,” December 1936—January 1937. Nine
photographs of the Hanover Merzbau are also included
in the exhibition and catalogue for “Fantastic Art”.
In November, Schwitters writes to both Barr and Josef
Albers, also living in the States, proposing to build a room
in the U.S. similar to the Merzbau, which he describes as
an abstract sculpture into which one can enter. Neither
Barr nor Albers pursues the idea.
The same month, Schwitters writes to Dreier from
Amsterdam, reporting on developments in his art and
advising her to write to him only in the Netherlands or
under a pseudonym.
1937
Due to the increasingly hostile political situation in
Germany, Schwitters flees to Norway on January 2,
joining his son, Ernst, who had left two weeks earlier.
Helma Schwitters remains in Hanover, visiting her
husband occasionally. Fortunately, Schwitters is able
to arrange for most of his work to be shipped from
his studio in Hanover to Norway. He begins building a
third Merz construction in Lysaker, the Haus am Bakken
(House on the Slope; destroyed 1951).
During her last trip to Europe, in spring 1937, Dreier visits
Helma in Hanover and views the Merzbau.
Throughout the summer Nazis continue to purge German
museums of modern art; works by Schwitters are
removed from institutions in Berlin, Hanover, Mannheim,
Breslau, Saarbrücken, Wiesbaden, and elsewhere. The
Merz Picture, 1919; Ring Picture, 1920/21; Mz 190,
164

1921; and Mz 195 Das Eine (Mz 195 The One), 1921, are
included in the second “Entartete Kunst” exhibition. All
of the above are missing and presumed destroyed.
1938
Peggy Guggenheim, an American collector living in
London, borrows five works by Schwitters from Nelly van
Doesburg and includes them in “Exhibition of Collages,
Papiers-collés, and Photo-montages” in her London
gallery, Guggenheim-Jeune. When the war starts,
Guggenheim will return to the United States and show
Schwitters’s works at Art of This Century, her influential
gallery in New York.
In July, Schwitters’s work is included in “Exhibition of
Twentieth-Century German Art” at New Burlington
Galleries, London (organized in opposition to the
“Entartete Kunst” exhibitions), and in September—
October in “International nutidskunst. Konstruktivisme,
neoplasticime, abstract kunst, surrealisme,” Oslo.
1939
Poems and a drawing by Schwitters are included in
Homme que a perdu son squelette, the fourth volume
of Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s magazine of contemporary art,
Plastique, published in Paris.
“Art of Tomorrow” at the Museum of Non Objective
Painting (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum),
New York, June, includes Schwitters’s work.
The next month, Helma Schwitters visits her husband in
Norway for the last time.
In September, Germany invades Poland, thus signaling
the beginning of World War II. Great Britain and France
declare war on Germany.
“Some New Forms of Beauty” at George Walter Vincent
Smith Art Gallery, Springfield, Massachusetts, November
9—December 17, includes Relief with Red Segment; the
exhibition travels to Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford,
Connecticut, January 4 - February 4, 1940.
1940-41
At the beginning of 1940, with the help of Steinitz,
Schwitters unsuccessfully attempts to procure an
American visa.
When German troops invade Norway in April 1940,
Schwitters; his son, Ernst; and Ernst’s wife, Esther,
flee over a period of several weeks to Great Britain. The
Schwitterses are interned in various detention camps
in Scotland and England for the remainder of 1940 and
through the end of 1941. Schwitters writes a poem about
the experience titled “Flucht” (Flight).
In one such camp, Hutchinson Camp, Schwitters is able
to set up a studio where he makes collages, sculpture,
and portraits of other detainees, He also stages recitals
(which include “Silence,” the first poem he wrote in
English) and publishes in the internees’ journal, The
Camp.
In December 1941 he is released from internment and
moves to London. He meets Edith Thomas (nicknamed
“Wantee”), who later becomes his companion.
Dreier and Duchamp retire the Société Anonyme in
1941 and donate its collection, including several pieces
by Schwitters, to the Yale University Art Gallery, New
Haven, Connecticut. Upon Dreier’s death in 1952,
her personal art collection is bequeathed to important
public collections; works by Schwitters go to the
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Musum, New York; and the Museum of
Modern Art, New York.
1942
Schwitters continues to compose poetry, in English,
until the end of his life, having renounced the German
language during the war.
Schwitters’s works continue to find audience in the U.S.;
five are included in “The Exhibition of the Collection of
the Société Anonyme—Museum of Modern Art: 1920,”
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut,
January 12—February 22; and three in the ongoing
exhibition of Peggy Guggenheim’s collection, “Art of
This Century; Objects—Drawings—Photographs—
Paintings—Sculpture—Collages 1910—1942,” Art of This
Century, New York, October 21, 1942—June 1947.
1943-45
Peggy Guggenheim includes Schwitters’s work in
“Exhibition of Collage” at Art of This Century, New York,
April 16—May 5, 1943.
The family home of the Schwitterses in Hanover,
together with the Merzbau, is destroyed by Allied bombs
on October 8 and 9, 1943.
In April 1944, Schwitters suffers a stroke and is
temporarily paralyzed on one side of his body. Helma
Schwitters dies of cancer in Hanover on October 29.
Schwitters does not learn of her death until December.
Schwitters is the focus of a one-man exhibition at the
Modern Art Gallery, London, December1944. Herbert
Read contributes an introduction and essay to the
CHRONOLOGY
165

exhibition catalogue. In November 1945, Schwitters
writes to Alfred Barr in an attempt to circulate the
exhibition to the United States. Unfortunately, Barr had
been asked to resign from the Museum of Modern Art
the previous autumn.
Jan Tschichold organizes a presentation of Schwitters’s
work to accompany the exhibition “Der Sturm (Sammlung
Nell Walden)” at Kunstmuseum Bern, February—April
1945.
After the war ends in June, Ernst Schwitters returns to
Norway; he assumes Norwegian citizenship at the end of
the year. At the same time, Kurt Schwitters moves with
his companion, Edith Thomas, to Ambleside in the Lake
District of England. Schwitters remains in poor financial
condition until the end of his life. During these years, he
earns some money painting portraits, landscapes, and
still-lifes. A friend from Hanover, Walter Dux, who is also
living in London, provides additional assistance.
1946
Schwitters is unusually prolific in the last two years of
his life, producing a large number of collages in 1946
and 1947.
Carola Giedion-Welcker publishes thirteen of Schwitters’s
poems in her anthology Poètes à l’Ècart—Antholoqie der
Abseitigen, Benteli, Bern.
In April, Schwitters writes to Oliver M. Kaufmann in
Chicago asking him for funds to use to restore the
remains of the Merzbau. The following year, on his sixtieth
birthday, June 20, 1947, Schwitters is awarded $1,000 by
the Museum of Modern Art, New York (funds provided
by Kaufmann), for reconstructing or continuing existing
Merz constructions, whether in Hanover or Lysaker.
Unable to travel outside England, Schwitters chooses to
start a new Merz construction, the Merz Barn, on a farm
belonging to Harry Pierce near Elterwater in the Lake
District. The Merz Barn is never completed.
packages of food and vitamins to him in England.
Despite increasing frailty, Schwitters is able to stage two
Merz evenings at the London Gallery, March 5 and 7. He
is unable to convince the BBC to record his “Ursonate.”
Schwitter’s work is included in “The White Plain” at
the Pinacotheca, New York, March 19—April 12, an
influential exhibition of leading European abstract artists
such as Mondrian and Kandinsky and the American artist
Burgoyne Diller.
1948
On January 8, one day after being granted British
citizenship, Kurt Schwitters dies in England of acute
pulmonary edema and myocarditis. After an initial burial
in Ambleside, his remains are moved to Hanover in 1970.
Twenty-six of Schwitters’s works are featured,
posthumously, in the artist’s first solo exhibition in
the United States, held at the Pinacotheca (later the
Rose Fried Gallery), January 19—February 29. Dreier
contributes an essay to the exhibition catalogue titled
“Kurt Schwitters: The Dadas Have Come to Town”;
Naum Gabo and Charmion von Wiegand also write text.
Margaret Miller includes nineteen works by Schwitters
in ‘Collage,’ the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
September 21—December 5.
Clare Elliott, „Chronology”, first published in Kurt Schwitters:
Color and Collage, edited by Isabel Schulz (Houston: Menil
Collection, 2010).
© Menil Foundation, Inc., Houston, reprinted with permission.
Schwitters begins corresponding with Margaret Miller, a
curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who is organizing
an exhibition of collages for the museum.
Schwitters spends the end of 1946 confined to bed after
a hip fracture.
Schwitters renews contact with Katherine Dreier. The
two discuss the possibility of a Schwitters exhibition in
the United States; the result is a solo show, organized
by Dreier, held in 1948 at the Pinacotheca in New York.
1947
Dreier remains in touch with Schwitters, sending
166

Catalogue Raisonné
Karin Orchard and Isabel Schulz. Kurt Schwitters:
Catalogue Raisonné. Published by the Sprengel Museum
Hannover, on behalf of the Savings Bank Foundation
of Lower Saxony, the NORD/LB Norddeutsche
Landesbank, the Sparkasse Hannover, and the Kurt and
Ernst Schwitters Foundation. 3 vols. Ostfildern-Ruit:
Hatje Cantz, 2000-2006.
Publications by Kurt Schwitters
In addition to working as a visual artist, Kurt Schwitters
was a prolific writer and poet; a comprehensive
bibliography of Schwitters’s writings is in the catalogue
raisonné (see above). Listed below are selected writings
by Schwitters published during his lifetime; others may
be found in the Chronology. Publications and recordings
by Kurt Schwitters are listed in chronological order.
Selected Writings Published during Schwitters’s
Lifetime (excluding Merz magazine)
Anna Blume. Dichtungen. Die Silbergäule 39/40.
Hanover: Paul Steegemann, 1919; rev. ed. Hanover: Paul
Steegemann, 1922.
Die Kathedrale. 8 Lithos von Kurt Schwitters. Die
Silbergäule 41/42. Hanover: Paul Steegemann, 1920.
Kurt Schwitters. Book 4 of Sturm-Bilderbuch. Berlin:
Sturm, [ca. 1920].
Elementar. Die Blume Anna. Die neue Anna Blume. Eine
Gedichtsammlung aus den Jahren 1918—1922. Berlin:
Sturm, 1922.
Memoiren Anna Blumes in Bleie. Eine leichtfassliche
Methode zur Erlernung des Wahnsinns für Jedermann.
Schnitter-Bücher. Die hohe Reihe. Freiburg (Baden):
Walter Heinrich, 1922.
Auguste Bolte (ein Lebertran). Tran Nr. 30. Berlin: Sturm,
1923.
Lithos von Kurt Schwitters. Fifty numbered copies. 1923.
Merz 4. Banalitäten. July 1923.
Merz 5. 7 Arpaden. Portfolio with seven lithographs by
Hans Arp. Fifty numbered copies. 1923.
With Hans Arp. Merz 6. lmitatoren watch step! Arp 1.
Propaganda [sic] und Arp. Oct. 1923.
Merz 7. Subsequently called Tapsheft. Jan. 1924.
Merz 8/9. Nasci. Typography by El Lissitzky. July 1924.
“Merz 10. Bauhaus-Buch.” Announced in Merz 8/9 but
not published.
Merz 11. Typoreklame. The so-called Pelikan-Nummer.
November 1924.
With Kate Steinitz. Hahnepeter (Merz 12), [1924]. Fifty
numbered copies, hand colored and signed by the
author. Also published as Aposs 1; Aposs-Verlag, 1925.
Individual copies with glued-on paper bands titled Merz
12. 1925.
With Kate Steinitz and Theo van Doesburg. Die Scheuche
(Merz 14/15). 1925. First published as Aposs 3; Aposs-
Verlag. Individual copies with glued-on paper bands later
called Merz 14/15. 1925.
With Kate Steinitz. Die Märchen vom Paradies (Merz
16/17). 1924. First published as Aposs 2; Aposs-Verlag.
lndividual copies with glued-on paper bands called Merz
16/17 1925/II. 1925.
Ludwig Hilberseimer. Grosstadtbauten (Merz 18/19).
Neue Architektur, ed. by Kurt Schwitters and Kate
Steinitz, 1), 1925; subsequently called Merz 18/19.
Jan.—Apr. 1926.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Die neue Gestaltung der Typographie. Brochure.
Hanover: K. Schwitters, [1925].
Merz Magazines
From 1923 to 1932, Kurt Schwitters published a
magazine called Merz, which he wrote by himself or in
collaboration and published in Hanover.
Merz 1. Holland Dada. Jan. 1923.
Merz 2 Nummer i. Apr. 1923.
Merz 3 Merz Mappe. Erste Mappe des Merzverlages. 6
Merz 20. Kurt Schwitters. Katalog. 1927.
Merz 21 erstes Veilchen-Heft. Eine kleine Sammlung von
Merz-Dichtungen aller Art von Kurt Schwitters. 1931
“Merz 22. Entwicklung.” Announced in Merz 21 but
never published.
“Merz 23. e. E.” Announced in an insert in Merz 21 but
never published.
Merz 24. Ursonate. 1932. Typography by Jan Tschichold.
Fifty of 1,ooo copies numbered and signed.
167

Original Recordings by Kurt Schwitters
Merz 13 Merz - Grammophonplatte. Scherzo of
“Ursonate” spoken by Kurt Schwitters. Hanover, 1925.
Anna Blume. Scherzo der Ursonate. Spoken by Kurt
Schwitters, Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Stuttgart, May 5,
1932.
Kurt Schwitters. Urwerk. Ed. Robert Galitz, Kurt Kreiler,
and Klaus Gabbert. Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, 2007.
Texts by Kurt Schwitters Published Posthumously
Kurt Schwitters. Das Iiterarische Werk. 5 vols. Ed. Friedhelm
Lach. Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1973 - 81.
Three Painter-Poets: Arp, Schwitters, Klee. Selected
Poems. Ed. by Harriet Watts. Baltimore, MD: Penguin
Books, 1974.
Kurt Schwitters. Wir spielen, bis uns der Tod abholt.
Briefe aus fünf Jahrzehnten. Ed. By Ernst Nündel.
Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1974.
The Merzbook: Kurt Schwitters Poems. Ed. by Colin
Morton. Kingston, Ontario: Quarry Press, 1987.
The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology. Ed. Robert
Motherwell. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1951;
reprint, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. 1989.
Schwitters: Norwegian Landscapes, the Zoological
Garden’s Lottery and More Stories. Ed. Per Kirkeby.
Hellerup, DK: Edtion Bløndal, 1995.
Kurt Schwitters: Poems, Performance Pieces, Proses,
Plays, Poetics. Ed. Pierre Joris, Jerome Rothenberg,
and Naomi Yang. Philadelphia: Temple University Press;
reprint, Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 2002.
Kurt Schwitters: Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales.
Ed. and trans. Jack Zipes; illustrated by Irvine Peacock.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Monographic Publications
Beaujean, Marion, and Maria Haldenwanger. Schwitters-
Archiv der Stadtbibliothek Hannover: Bestandsverzeichnis
1986. Hanover: Stadtbibliothek Hannover, 1986.
Brookes, V. J. “Fred.” “Schwitters in Exile: The Rural Art
of Kurt Schwitters 1937—1948.” PhD diss., University of
Newcastle upon Tyne, 1967.
Crossley, Barbara. The Triumph of Kurt Schwitters.
Ambleside, England: Armitt Trust, 2005.
Dietrich, Dorothea. The Collages of Kurt Schwitters.
Tradition and Innovation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Elger, Dietmar. Der Merzbau von Kurt Schwitters: Eine
Werkmonographie. Kunstwissenschaftliche Bibliothek,
ed. Christian Posthofen, 12. Cologne: König, 1999.
Ewig, Isabelle. Kurt Schwitters Oxymore ou l’art de Ia
contradiction. PhD diss., Université Paris, Sorbonne.
Lille: A.N.R.T. Université de Lille Ill, 2000.
Fuchs, Rudi. Conflicts with Modernism or the Absence
of Kurt Schwitters. Vol. 1 of Theme and Objection. Bern:
Gachnang and Springer, 1991.
Gamard, Elizabeth Burns. Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau:
The Cathedral of Erotic Misery. New York; Princeton
Architectural Press, 2000.
Germundson, Curt Robert. “Kurt Schwitters in Hanover;
Investigation of the Cultural Environment.” PhD diss.,
University of Iowa, 2001.
Luke, Megan Rand. “Space for Recognition; The Late
Work and Exile of Kurt Schwitters (1930 - 1948).” PhD
diss., Harvard University, 2009.
Nih, Annegreth. “Decoding Merz: An Interpretative
Study of Kurt Schwitters’ Early Work, 1918—1922.” PhD
diss., University of Texas at Austin 1990.
Notz, Adrian, and Ulrich Christ. Merz World: Processing the
Complicated Order. Zurich: Jrp Ringier Kunstverlag, 2008.
Nündel, Ernst. Kurt Schwitters in Selbstzeugnissen und
Bilddokumenten. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981.
Orchard, Karin, and Isabel Schulz. Kurt Schwitters. Werke
und Dokumente im Sprengel Museum Hannover/Kurt
Schwitters: Catalogue of the Works and Documents in
the Sprengel Museum Hannover. Hanover: Sprengel
Museum Hannover and Verein der Freunde des Sprengel
Museum Hannover, 1998.
Schmalenbach, Werner. Kurt Schwitters. New York: Harry
N. Abrams, 1967.
Sigrid, Franz. Kurt Schwitters’ Merz-Ästhetik im
Spannungsfeld der Künste. Freiburg im Breisgau:
Rombach, 2009.
Stadtmüller, Klaus. Schwitters in Norwegen: Arbeiten,
Dokumente, Ansichten. Hanover: Postskriptum, 1997.
168

Stark, Franz. Bestandsverzeichnis. Nachtrag 1987.
Hanover: Stadtbibliothek, 1987.
Steinitz, Kate. Kurt Schwitters: A Portrait from Life. With
Collision, A Science-Fiction Opera Libretto in Banalities,
by Kurt Schwitters and Kate Trauman Steinitz, and Other
Writings. Trans. Robert Bartlett Haas. Introduction by
John Coplans and Walter Hopps. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1968.
Themerson, Stefan. Kurt Schwitters in England. London:
Gaberbocchus, 1958.
Von der Horst, Frauke. “Anna Blume ‘gut aufgehoben’:
A Semiotic Interpretation of Works by Kurt Schwitters.”
PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1995.
Webster, Gwendolen. Kurt Merz Schwitters: A
Biographical Study. Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
1997.
—. “Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau.” PhD diss., Open
University, Milton Keynes, England, 2007.
Wiesing, Lambert. Stil statt Wahrheit: Kurt Schwitters und
Ludwig Wittgenstein über ästhetische Lebensformen.
Munich: W. Fink, 1991.
Monographic Exhibition Catalogues
Masterpieces by Great Masters: Also Paintings and
Sculpture by Kurt Schwitters. Introduction by Herbert
Read. London: Modern Art Gallery, 1944.
Kurt Schwitters. Text by Naum Gabo. New York:
Pinacotheca, 1948.
Sidney Janis Presents an Exhibition of Collage, Painting,
Relief and Sculpture by Schwitters. Text by Tristan Tzara.
New York: Sidney Janis Gallery; Chicago: Arts Club of
Chicago, 1952.
Kurt Schwitters: Collages. Text by Hans Bolliger. Paris:
Berggruen, 1954.
Kurt Schwitters. Hanover: Kestner-Gesellschaft, 1956.
Kurt Schwitters: 1887—1948. London: Lord’s Gallery, 1958.
Kurt Schwitters, Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum,
1962.
Schwitters. London: Marlborough Fine Art, 1963.
Kurt Schwitters in the Lake District. Kendal, England:
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, 1964.
Kurt Schwitters: Retrospective. University of California,
Los Angeles, 1965.
Kurt Schwitters: A Retrospective Exhibition. Dallas:
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1965.
Kurt Schwitters. Düsseldorf: Stadtische Kunsthalle
Düsseldorf, 1971.
Kurt Schwitters. Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1978.
Kurt Schwitters in Exile: The Late Work, 1937—1948/Kurt
Schwitters im Exil: Das Spätwerk, 1937—1948. London:
Marlborough Fine Art, 1981.
Kurt Schwitters. Tokyo: Seibu Museum of Art, 1983.
Kurt Schwitters: Die späten Werke. Ed. Siegfried Gohr.
Cologne: Museum LudwigKöln, 1985.
Kurt Schwitters 1887—1948. Ausstellung zum 99.
Geburtstag. Ed. Joachim Buchner and Norbert Nobis.
Hanover: Sprengel Museum Hannover; Berlin: Propyläen,
1986.
Kurt Schwitters. Ed. Serge Lemoine and Didier Semin.
In Spanish with English summary. Valencia, Spain: IVAM
Centre Julio González, 1995.
Kurt Schwitters in Nederland: Merz, De Stijl and Holland
Dada. Ed. Meta Knol. In Dutch/English. Heerlen,
Netherlands: Stadsgalerij Heerlen; Zwolle: Waanders
Uitgevers, 1997.
Kurt Schwitters: I Is Style. Ed. Siegfried Gohr and Gunda
Luyken on behalf of Rudi Fuchs. Amsterdam: Stedelijk
Museum; Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2000.
In the Beginning Was Merz: From Kurt Schwitters
to the Present Day. Ed. Susanne Meyer-Büser and
Karin Orchard. Hanover: Sprengel Museum Hannover;
Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2000.
Schwitters, Ed. Ingried Brugger, Siegfried Gohr, and
Gunda Luyken. Vienna: Kunstforum Wien; Salzburg:
Jung und Jung, 2002.
Kurt Schwitters: Merz—A Total Vision of the World.
Basel: Museum Tinguely; Bern: Benteli, 2004.
Schwitters Arp. Ed. Hartwig Fischer. Basel:
Kunstmuseum Basel; Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2004.
Merzgebiete: Kurt Schwitters und seine Freunde. Ed.
Karin Orchard and Isabel Schulz. Hanover: Sprengel
Museum Hannover; Cologne: Dumont, 2006.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
169

Collage/Collages from Cubism to New Dada. Ed. Maria
Mimita Lamberti and Maria Grazia Messina. In Italian.
Turin: Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea
Torino. In English. Milan: Elekta, 2007
L’esprit de Ia lettre. Paris: Maison de Victor Hugo, 2007.
Living in the Material World: “Things” in Art of the
Twentieth Century and Beyond. Tokyo: National Art
Center, 2007.
Kurt Schwitters in Norway. Ed. Karin Orchard.
Høvikodden, Norway: Henie Onstad Kunstsenter;
Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2009.
Further Reading
Abstrakte und surrealistische Malerei und Plastik. Exh.
cat. Zurich: Kunsthaus Zürich, 1929.
Behne, Adolf. “Kurt Schwitters.” Der Cicerone 12, no. 10
(May 1920): 416.
Brookes, Fred. “Schwitters’ Merzbarn.” Studio
International 117, no. 911 (May 1969): 224—27.
Cardinal, Roger. “Collecting and Collage-making: The
Case of Kurt Schwitters.” In Roger Cardinal and John
Elsner, The Cultures of Collecting, 68-96, 277—79.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Cubism and Abstract Art. Text by Alfred Barr, Jr. Exh. cat.
New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936.
Dada 1916—I923. Exh. cat. New York: Sidney Janis
Gallery, 1953.
DADA: Zurich Berlin Hannover Cologne New York Paris.
Ed. Leah Dickerman. Exh. cat. Washington, DC: National
Gallery of Art in association with D.A.P., 2005.
Dickerman, Leah. “Merz and Memory: On Kurt
Schwitters.” In The Dada Seminars, 103—25. CASVA
Seminar Papers, 1. Ed. Leah Dickerman and Matthew S.
Witkovsky. Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Study
in the Visual Arts, 2005.
Dickson, Rachel, and Sarah MacDougall. “Artists in
Exile in Britain c. 1933—45.” In Forced Journeys: Artists
in Exile in Britain c. 1933—45, 18-49. London: Ben Uri
Gallery and London Jewish Museum of Art, 2009.
Die abstrakten Hannover—Internationale Avantgarde
1927—1935. Exh. cat. Sprengel Museum Hannover;
Ludwigshafen. Germany: Wilhelm-Hack-Museum;
Ludwigshafen and Hanover: Josef Grütter, 1987.
Die zwanziger Jahre in Hannover: Bildende Kunst,
Literatur, Theater, Tanz, Architektur 1916—1933. Exh. cat.
Hanover: Kunstverein Hannover, 1962.
Dietrich, Dorothea, “The Fragment Reframed. Kurt
Schwitters’s Merz-column.” Assemblage: A Critical
Journal of Architecture and Design Culture 14 (Apr.
1991): 82-92.
Dreier, Katherine S. Modern Art. New York: Société
Anonyme and Museum of Modern Art, 1926; reprint,
New York, 1972.
—. Western Art and the New Era: An Introduction to
Modern Art. New York: Brentano’s, 1923.
Einstein, Carl, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Berlin:
Propyläen, 1931; reprint, Berlin: Fannei and Walz, 1996.
Elderfield, John. “The Early Work of Kurt Schwitters,”
Artforum 10, no. 3 (Nov. 1971): 54—67.
—. “Kurt Schwitters’ Last Merzbau,” Artforum 8, no. 2
(Oct. 1969): 56—64.
—. “On a Merz-Gesamtwerk.” Art International 21, no. 6
(Dec. 1977): 19—26.
—. “Private Objects: The Sculpture of Kurt Schwitters,”
Artforum 12, no. 1 (Sep. 1973): 45—54.
Exhibition of Twentieth-Century German Art. Exh. cat.
London: New Burlington Galleries, 1938.
Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. Text by Alfred Barr, Jr.
Exh. cat. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936.
Germundson, Curt. “Montage and Totality: Kurt
Schwitters’s Relationship to ‘Tradition’ and ‘Avant-garde’.”
In Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-Garde, 156—
83. Avant-Garde Critical Studies, 18. Ed. Dafydd Jones.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.
Giedion-Welcker, Carola. “Schwitters; Or the Allusions of
the Imagination” Magazine of Art 41, no. 6 (Oct. 1948):
218—21.
Greenberg, Clement. In “Art.” Nation 167, nos. 21, 27
(Nov.1948): 612—14. Reprinted as “Review of the
Exhibition Collage, 259—63. In Clement Greenberg.
The Collected Essays and Criticism. Ed. John O’Brian.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Herbert, Roland L., Eleanor S. Apter, and Elise K. Kenney.
170

The Société Anonyme and the Dreier Bequest at Yale
University: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1984.
An International Exhibition Illustrating the Most Recent
Development in Abstract Art. Exh. cat. Buffalo, NY:
Albright Art Gallery, 1931.
An International Exhibition of Modern Art, Assembled by
the Société Anonyme. Exh. cat. Brooklyn, NY: Société
Anonyme and Brooklyn Museum, 1926.
Janis, Harriet, and Rudi Blesh. Collage: Personalities,
Concepts, Techniques. Philadelphia: Chilton, 1962.
Katenhusen, Ines. Kunst und Politik: Hannovers
Auseinandersetzungen mit der Moderne in der Weimarer
Republik. Hannoversche Studien: Schriftenreihe des
Stadtarchivs Hannover, 5. Ed. Klaus Mlynek and Karljosef
Kreter. Hanover: Hahn, 1998.
King, Antoinette. “Kurt Schwitters’s Cherry Picture:
Material Change and an Ethical Problem.” In Essays on
Assemblage, 31—41. Studies in Modern Art, ed. John
Elderfeld, 2. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1992.
Kuspit, Donald. “Kurt Schwitters: When Collage Was
Young.” C Magazine, no. 7 (Fall 1985): 50—55. Reprinted
in Donald Kuspit, The New Subjectivism: Art in the 1980s,
57—66. Ann Arbor, Ml: UMI Research Press, 1988.
Lach, Friedhelm. “Schwitters: Performance Notes,” 39—
45. In Stephen C. Foster. Dada/ Dimensions. Ann Arbor,
Ml: UMI Research Press, 1985.
McBride, Patrizia. “The Game of Meaning: Collage,
Montage, and Parody in Kurt Schwitters’s Merz.”
Modernism/Modernity 14, no. 2 (Apr. 2007): 249—72.
Mehring, Walter. “Kurt Schwitters im ‘Sturm’.” Der
Cicerone 11, no. 14 (July 1919): 462.
Mesens, E. L. T. “A Tribute to Kurt Schwitters.” Art News
and Review 10, no. 19 (1958): 5—7.
Nebel, Adolf Behne. “Kurt Schwitters.” Der Cicerone 12,
no. 10 (May 1920): 416.
Nebel, Otto. “Kurt Schwitters.” Kurt Schwitters. Book 4
of Sturm Bilderbüch. Berlin: Sturm, [1920], 1-2.
Nil, Annegreth. “Weimar Politics and the Theme of Love
in Kurt Schwitters’ Das Bäumerbild.” Dada Surrealism,
no. 13 (1984): 17—36.
Orchard, Karin. “Cicero, the Roman Hitler: Kurt
Schwitters’ Verhältnis zum Nationalsozialismus.” In
Curiosa Poliphili. Festgabe für Horst Bredekamp zum
60. Geburtstag, 154—161. Ed. Nicole Hegener, Claudia
Lichte, and Bettina Marten. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 2007.
Osswald-Hoffmann, Cornelia. Zauber...und
Zeigeräume: Raumgestaltungen der 20er und 30er
Jahre. Die “Merzbauten” des Kurt Schwitters und
der “Prounenraum” sowie die Räumlichkeiten der
Abstrakten des El Lissitzky. Munich: Akademischer,
2003.
Ran, Faye. A History of Installation Art and the
Development of New Art Forms: Technology and the
Hermeneutics of Time and Space in Modern and
Postmodern Art from Cubism to Installation. New York:
Peter Lang, 2009.
Retiz, Leonard, “Schwitters and the Literary Tradition.”
German Life and Letters 27 (1973—74): 303—15.
Schmidt, Paul Ferdinand. Die Kunst der Gegenwart. Vol.
6 of Die Sechs Bücher der Kunst. Berlin: Sturm, [1922].
Schulz, Isabel. “The ‘Brother of Merz’ —Ernst and Kurt
Schwitters.” In Ernst Schwitters in Norway: Photographs
1930—1960, 202—7. Ed. Kurt und Ernst Schwitters
Stiftung. Exh. cat. Hanover: Sprengel Museum Hannover;
Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2005.
—, ed. Der Nachlass von Kurt und Ernst Schwitters.
Hanover: Kurt und Ernst Schwitters Stiftung, 2002.
—. “Geklebte Malerei—Die Collagen von Kurt
Schwitters.” In CollageWelten 1: Das Experiment—Zur
Collage im 20. Jahrhundert, 109—15. Ed. Burkhard
Leismann. Exh. cat. Ahlen: Kunst-Museum Ahlen;
Bramsche: Rasch, 2001.
Seitz, William Chapin. The Art of Assemblage. Exh. cat.
New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961.
Steel, David A. “DADA—ADAD. Kurt Schwitters, Poetry.
Collage, Typography and the Advert.” Word & Image 6.
no. 2 (Apr.—June 1990): 198—209.
Stokes, Charlotte, and Stephen C. Foster, eds. Dada:
Cologne—Hanover. Vol. 3 of Crisis and the Arts: The
History of Dada. New York: G. K. Hall; London: Prentice
Hall International, 1997.
te Heesen, Anke. Der Zeitungsausschnitt: Ein Papierobjekt
der Moderne. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2006.
Typographie kann unter Umständen Kunst sein, vols.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
171

1, 3, and 4. Ed. Perdita Lottner. Exh. cats. Hanover:
Sprengel Museum Hannover, 1990.
Umland, Anne, Adrian Sudhalter, and Scott Gerson.
Dada in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art,
275—99. Studies in Modern Art, 9. New York: Museum
of Modern Art, 2008.
Dillon, Brian. “Species of Spaces: Art, Architecture
and Environment.” In Psycho Buildings: Artists Take on
Architecture, 29—37. Exh. cat. London: Hayward Gallery,
2008.
—. “Dada-Hanover.” In Dada and the Press, 293—349.
Ed. Harriett Watts and Stephen C. Foster. Vol. 9 of Crisis
and the Arts: The History of Dada. New York: G. K. Hall;
London: Prentice Hall International, 2004.
—. “Kurt Schwitters and Katherine Dreier.” German Life
and Letters 52, no. 4 (Oct. 1999): 443-56.
172

Important group exhibitions in Europe and the United
States held during Schwitters lifetime may be found in
the Chronology. Exhibitions are listed in chronological
order.
“Collages by Kurt Schwitters,” The Phillips Gallery,
Washington, D.C., 1957
“Kurt Schwitters,” Lord’s Gallery, London, 1958
[Unknown title], Galerie Goyert, Cologne, 1919
“Der Sturm. 76. Ausstellung. Kurt Schwitters, M.
Langenstrass-Uhlig,” Galerie Der Sturm, Berlin, July 1919
Galerie Herbert Cramer, Frankfurt, 1920
“Der Sturm. 96. Ausstellung. Kurt Schwitters. Merzbilder,
Merzzeichnungen. Gesamtschau,” Galerie Der Sturm,
Berlin, April 1921
“Der Sturm. 138. Ausstellung. Otto Nebel. Kurt
Schwitters. Gesamtschau,” Galerie Der Sturm, Berlin,
February 1925
“Grosse Merzausstellung 1927.” The following venues
have been verified: Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden
in the Neues Museum and Wiesbadener Gesellschaft für
Bildende Kunst, Wiesbaden; Städtische Gemäldegalerie,
Bochum, Germany; Ruhmeshalle, Barmen, Germany,
1927
“Sonderausstellung Kurt Schwitters,” Kunstverein für
Böhmen, Prague, 1927
“Kurt Schwitters,” [?] Galerie Blomquist, Oslo, 1934
“Paintings and Sculpture by Kurt Schwitters,” The
Modern Art Gallery. London, December 1944
“Gedächtnisausstellung Kurt Schwitters,” Galerie d’Art
Moderne Basel, 1948
“Kurt Schwitters,” The Pinacotheca, New York, 1948
“Collage, Painting, Relief and Sculpture by Schwitters,”
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York; The Arts Club of Chicago,
1952
“Kurt Schwitters. Collages,” Berggruen Gallery, Paris,
1954
“Kurt Schwitters: Fifty-Seven Collages,” Sidney Janis
Gallery, New York, 1956
“Kurt Schwitters,” Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover;
Kunsthalle Bern (together with Hans Arp); Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brüssel;
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lüttich, Germany, 1956
“Seventy-Five Collages by Kurt Schwitters,” Sidney Janis
Gallery, New York, 1959
“Kurt Schwitters 1887—1948,” Cambridge Arts Council
Gallery, 1959; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea,
England; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, England; Leicester
Museum and Art Gallery, England; Herbert Temporary
Art Gallery, Coventry, England; Glasgow University Print
Room, Scotland, 1960
“Kurt Schwitters. 1887—1948,” Minami Gallery, Tokyo,
1960
“XXX Biennale Internazionale d’Arte. Sonderausstellung
Kurt Schwitters,” La Biennale di Venezia, 1960
“Kurt Schwitters Sonderausstellung,” VI Bienal de São
Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 1961
“Fifty Collages by Schwitters,” Sidney Janis Gallery, New
York, 1962
“Kurt MERZ Schwitters. 1887-1948, Retrospektivt/
Schwitters/Kurt Schwitters. 1887—1948/Kurt Schwitters.
1887-1948. Schilderijen, collages, sculpturen, tekeningen/
Schwitters. Mostra retrospettiva,” Konstsalongen
Samlaren im Konstnärshuset, Stockholm; Statens
Museum for Kunst und Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen,
1962; Marlborough Fine Art, London; Wallraf-Richartz-
Museum und Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, 1963;
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Toninelli
Arte Moderna, Milan; Marlborough Galleria d’Arte,
Rome, 1964
“Kurt Schwitters,” Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum,
San Antonio, Texas; Pasadena Art Museum, California;
The Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire;
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1962;
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; J. B. Speed Art
Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, 1963
“Kurt Schwitters in the Lake District,” Abbot Hall Art
Gallery, Kendal, England, 1964
“Kurt Schwitters. ‘Aphorismer,’ 1918—1947. Collage och
relief, Konstsalongen Samlaren,” Stockholm, 1965
“Kurt Schwitters, Retrospective,” University of California
at Los Angeles; Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York;
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
173

The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri;
Art Gallery of Toronto, 1965
“Kurt Schwitters: A Retrospective Exhibition,” Dallas
Museum of Fine Arts, 1965; San Francisco Museum of
Art; City Art Museum of Saint Louis, 1966
“Kurt Schwitters,” Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf;
Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart;
Kunsthalle Basel; Kunstverein in Hamburg, 1971
“Kurt Schwitters,” Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, 1978
“Kurt Schwitters in Exile: The Late Work 1937—1948,”
Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1981
“Kurt Schwitters in England,” Abbot Hall Art Gallery,
Kendal, England, 1982
“Kurt Schwitters,” The Museum of Modern Art, Seibu
Takanawa, Karuizawa, Japan; The Seibu Museum of Art,
Tokyo, 1983; Seibu Hall, Seibu Department Stores, Otsu,
Japan 1984
“Kurt Schwitters. Die späten Werke,” Museum Ludwig,
Cologne, 1985
“Kurt Schwitters,” The Museum of Modern Art, New
York, 1985; Tate Gallery, London; Sprengel Museum
Hannover, 1986
“Der Typograph Kurt Schwitters, Stadtbibliothek
Hannover, 1987
“Kurt Schwitters,” Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée
national d’art moderne, Paris, 1994; IVAM Centre Julio
González, Valencia, Spain; Musée de Grenoble, France,
1995
“Kurt Schwitters,” Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico
City, 2003
“Kurt Schwitters (1887—1948). Collages, Paintings,
Drawings, Objects, Ephemera,” Ubu Gallery, New York,
2003
“I Build My Time.’ Kurt Schwitters in Ambleside,” Armitt
Museum and Library, Ambleside, England, 2003
“Kurt Schwitters. Merz—ein Gesamtweltbild,” Museum
Tinguely, Basel, 2004
“Schwitters Arp,” Kunstmuseum Basel, 2004
“Kurt Schwitters 1887—1948. O artista MERZ,”
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Museu Oscar
Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil, 2007
“Merzgebiete. Kurt Schwitters und seine Freunde/
Kurt Schwitters en de avant-garde,” Sprengel Museum
Hannover, 2006; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam, 2007
“Kurt Schwitters in Norway,” Henie Onstad Kunstsenter,
Høvikodden, Oslo, 2009
Selected Bibliography and Solo Exhibitions first published in
Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage, edited by Isabel Schulz
(Houston: Menil Collection, 2010).
© 2010 Menil Foundation, Inc., Houston, reprinted with
permission.
“Kurt Schwitters in Nederland. Merz, De Stijl + Holland
Dada,” Stadsgalerij Heerlen, The Netherlands, 1997
“Kurt Schwitters. Eine Retrospektive/Kurt Schwitters. Ich
ist Stil/l Is Style/Ik is stijl,” Museum der bildenden Künste
Leipzig, Germany; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2000
“Aller Anfang ist Merz. Von Kurt Schwitters bis
heute,” Sprengel Museum Hannover, Hanover, 2000;
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Haus
der Kunst, Munich, 2001
“Kurt Schwitters. Collages, dipinti e sculture 1914—
1947,” Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, 2001
“Schwitters,” Kunstforum Wien, Vienna, 2002
174

KURT SCHWITTERS: MERZ
June 12 - September 30, 2016
Photo credits
As stated in the corresponding photo caption
All works by Kurt Schwitters, Ernst Schwitters, El Lissitzky, Ad Reinhardt, Louise Nevelson,
Lyonel Feininger © 2016, ProLitteris, Zurich
Editors
Krystyna Gmurzynska
Mathias Rastorfer
Research and Coordination
Lisi Linster, Melanie Pfeiffer
Design Coordination
Verena Andric
Following Texts:
Kurt Schwitters, MERZ; i (a manifesto); Anna Blossom has wheels and Werner Schmalenbach, Kurt
Schwitters previously published in Kurt Schwitters, Galerie Gmurzynska, Grand Palais, Paris 1980
Ernst Schwitters, Kurt Schwitters, as writer, poet and lecturer previously published in Kurt Schwitters,
Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne 1978
Some documentary images were previously published in Kurt Schwitters, Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne
1978 and Kurt Schwitters, Galerie Gmurzynska, Grand Palais, Paris 1980
Translators
(amongst others)
Michael Eldred
Simone Kaiser
Maria Schneeweiss
Designed and printed by
Grafiche Step, Parma, Italy
ISBN
3-905792-33-8
978-3-905792-33-1
Publication © Galerie Gmurzynska 2016
galerie gmurzynska zurich
Paradeplatz 2 · 8001 Zurich · Switzerland
Phone +41 (44) 226 70 70 · Fax +41 (44) 226 70 90
www.gmurzynska.com · galerie@gmurzynska.com
galerie gmurzynska st. moritz
Via Serlas 22 · 7500 St. Moritz · Switzerland
Phone +41 (81) 833 36 51 · Fax +41 (81) 833 36 58
www.gmurzynska.com · galerie@gmurzynska.com
galerie gmurzynska zug
Vorstadt 14 · 6300 Zug · Switzerland
Phone +41 (41) 710 25 02 · Fax +41 (41) 710 26 75
www.gmurzynska.com · galerie@gmurzynska.com
175

WWW.GMURZYNSKA.COM