Schwitters, Kurt

German artist and poet. He was a leading member of the Dada movement. His most important works are constructions and collages, which he called ‘Merz’, made from scraps and bric-a-brac of all kinds.

After an early cubist phase, he became a founder-member of the Hanover Dada group 1919. He founded the influential Dada journal Merz 1923 and in the same year began his first of his Merzbauen (‘Merz houses’), extensive constructions, some filling an entire building, of wood and scrap. Most were destroyed, though Merz 32 1924 has been preserved in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He also devised poems that consisted of sounds without words.

He moved to Norway 1937 and, following the German invasion, to England 1940, where he spent the rest of his life. He continued making his Merzbauen, the last being in a barn in Ambleside, in the Lake District (now preserved in the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-on-Tyne).