KURT SCHWITTERS (1887-1948)

By 1929 Schwitters' concept of the Merzbild--a picture constructed from the detritus of everyday life and assembled into a new, cohesive and aesthetically pleasing order--was well established. In the mid 1920s Schwitters, along with a wide range of former Dadaists and constructivist artists such as El Lissitzky, with whom he collaborated on a number of projects at this time, were drawn to the ideal of integrating the constructive principle, revealed in their art, into life. It was towards this end that Schwitters persisted in the laborious and time-consuming construction of his Merzbau or Merz-House in his home in Hanover throughout the 1920s. By the late 1920s, Schwitters had become aware of the limitations that reducing his art of assemblage to the mere geometry of the Constructivist style produced, and was seeking in his work to reintegrate the constructive logic of Merz with the organic forms of nature.