Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) was one of the most prominent figures of the twentieth-century avant-garde, and his work has influenced generations of subsequent artists. Schwitters was an individualist who was known for pushing creative boundaries and who maintained ties to a range of art movements, including Dadaism and constructivism.

Schwitters referred to his working method as “Merz”: he used it to pursue his aim of transforming the everyday into art and creating a harmonious order that could provide a counterpoint to a chaotic and unstable world. In the wake of the First World War, Schwitters came to embody the spirit of freedom and the dawn of a new artistic day from the ruins of the past.

Schwitters’s practice was extraordinarily varied: he worked as a painter, collage and installation artist, illustrator and typographer, magazine editor, writer, poet, and performer. At the centre of his worldview was the principle of collage – the concept of creating art by collecting, combining, and transforming objects, images, and words.

Denounced as a “degenerate artist” by the Nazi regime, Schwitters left Germany in 1937, living in exile in Norway and England. His life in exile was one of isolation and destitution, but he nonetheless persisted with his artistic pursuits. His later work demonstrates an extraordinary artistic resilience and an undiminished passion for experimentation, combining artistic utopia and human tragedy.