Life and career
Schwitters developed Merz in Hanover after World War I, combining discarded materials, print, poetry and constructed environments. He moved beyond a single medium while maintaining an interest in formal organisation. Nazi persecution forced him into exile, first in Norway and later Britain; the examples here focus on an earlier, well-documented experimental period.
Works across a career
Selected examples, not a complete catalogue. Read date ranges and attributions before inferring a career sequence.
- 01
1920
1920
Little Dance
- Material / technique
- collage
- Attribution / role
- Museum attribution
- Collection / source
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
Museum catalogue note
With collages of densely interwoven scraps of paper gleaned from daily life, Schwitters produced dynamic compositions in which the interaction of the materials becomes a kind of dance. Notice here the way the color red "dances" among the subdued tones of white, gray, and ochre.
Collection text · The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 - 02
1923
1923
Merz 3 Portfolio: Plate 1
- Material / technique
- lithograph
- Attribution / role
- Museum attribution
- Collection / source
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
Museum catalogue note
Dada was a literary and art movement that began in Europe during World War I. It was characterized by cynicism, expressions of outrage at the conditions of the world, and rebellion against all established artistic conventions and traditional art forms. In 1919 Kurt Schwitters developed his own version of Dada named Merz which took the form of poetry, public recitals of nonsense, and collages. The verbal juxtapositions of unrelated words in his poems had a visual equivalent in compositions made up of bits of paper—urban debris that the artist avidly collected from the city streets. According to Schwitters, "Merz was the second syllable of Kommerz . . . it was cut out and glued on from an advertisement for the Kommerz und Privatbank (Commercial and Private Bank)." The six lithographs in the Merzmappe were made at the Molling printing plant where Schwitters salvaged recently printed material like patterned pieces of paper, parts of illustrations, cigarette wrappers, advertisements, and letters. He made collages of these freshly printed papers while they were still wet with oily printing ink and transferred the images to the lithographic stone.
Collection text · The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 - 03
1924
View this work at the source
Reference entry · image not reproduced1924
Merz Drawing
- Material / technique
- Cut-and-pasted coloured and printed papers and button on paper
- Attribution / role
- Museum attribution
- Collection / source
- The Museum of Modern Art
Compare materials, style and colour
Compare the 1920 collage, the 1923 lithograph and the 1924 Merz Drawing. Found paper brings pre-existing colour, text and texture; printing can translate a constructed rhythm into a repeatable image. Do not confuse a reproduced texture with a physical scrap attached to the sheet. This focused group does not illustrate his later exile works.
Material
What can this material do? Distinguish a design, an original object and a later impression or cast.
Style
Compare viewpoint, edges, composition and marks. Which choices persist, and which change?
Colour
Compare palette, contrast and light. Consider the support, printing, surface treatment and ageing.
Sources and further reading
Original educational interpretation; catalogue descriptions are separately credited. Each study links to its source. Reference entries without images are not added to the comparison timeline.