| Overview of Schwitters’ life and work

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) was a key figure of the twentieth-century avant-garde, an all-rounder whose diverse activities as an artist, writer, typographer, and performer were unequalled by any of his contemporaries. He is now acknowledged as the master of collage and a pioneer of modern movements, from Pop Art and Fluxus to Conceptual and multimedia art. Though inspired by Dada and Constructivism, his guiding principle remained his one-man movement of MERZ—a means, he said, of establishing relationships, best of all between all the things in the world. MERZ proved anathema to the Nazis, and in 1937 Schwitters fled Hannover to Norway and finally to England.

This overview of Schwitters’s life and work sheds fresh light on his art, his writings, and his ventures into commercial art. It also offers a new perspective on the Merzbau, the monumental interior he referred to as his “life’s work.”   (English edition ISBN 978-3-7757-2511-8)