Kurt Schwitters

“I am a painter, I nail my paintings.”

This statement by Kurt Schwitters captures the method he referred to as Merz particularly well. His works often appear, at first glance, to be classical panel paintings. In most cases, however, they are collages made from a wide range of materials. Some elements are painted, but this is not traditional oil painting on canvas. The practices of assembling and collaging link Schwitters to Dadaism, or Dada for short. In contrast to this, however, his works are often abstract. This is also the case here, in this “Merz Picture”. It consists of various papers that form a flat, geometric and above all abstract composition. Some of these are papers printed with text – probably taken from newspapers and advertisements. The texts remain fragments, however, and therefore have no further meaning beyond their reference to everyday life. In the image, one piece of writing has been cut up, yet remains legible. It consists of the capital letters “M”, “E”, “R” and “Z” – spelling Merz. On top of this, Schwitters glued and “nailed” additional objects onto the surface, such as a wooden button and a piece of wood at the centre of the composition. He said of this:

“But with that, the whole swindle that people call war was over. I left my job without giving any notice, and then it began. … I felt free and had to shout my jubilation out into the world. Out of frugality, I used what I could find, for we were a poor country. You can also shout with rubbish, and that is what I did, by gluing and nailing it together. I called it Merz, but it was my prayer for the victorious outcome of the war, for once again peace had prevailed. Everything was broken anyway, and the task was to build something new out of the fragments. That is Merz.”

This work is one of many by Schwitters that belonged to Hans Arp. The two artists shared a long-standing friendship that began in 1918. Over the years, they worked together repeatedly, co-wrote texts, and dedicated works to one another.