Kurt Schwitters, Mz 299, 1921 By Encyclopedia Britannica Soon after World War I, Kurt Schwitters was attracted by the emerging Dada school, a nihilistic literary and artistic movement dedicated to the destruction of existing aesthetic values. Denied membership in the Berlin circle of Dadaists, he formed his own variant in Hannover. He began to create compositions assembled from various everyday objects (train tickets, wooden spools, newspaper, string, cigarettes, and postage stamps). Similarly, his poems were composites of newspaper headlines, advertising slogans, and other printed ephemera. He referred to all of his artistic activities as Merz, a nonsense word derived from the second syllable of the word Kommerz (German: “commerce”). His collages were called Merzbilden (“Merz pictures”). Later, he also referred to all of his daily activities and even to himself by that name. In 1937, when the German government declared Schwitters' art decadent, he moved to Norway. With the German invasion of Norway in 1940, however, Schwitters was forced to escape to England. The 'Mz' in the title of this work stands for 'Merz' and is followed by a number to denote that it is the 299th collage of the series. Schwitters produced around 2000 collages during his life, using coloured and printed papers with a variety of textures. His inclusion of fragments of paper, which have text on them, is reminiscent of cubist works, which feature scraps of newspaper. Schwitters's collages of 1920 to 1922 frequently employ a 'radiating' format, with diagonally pasted papers fanning out from the bottom centre. (words: 243)
Image Details: * Accession no. GMA 4081 * Medium Collage on paper * Size 18.00 x 14.50 cm (including mount: 20.00 x 16.00 cm) * Copyright © DACS 2006 * Credit Bequeathed by Gabrielle Keiller 1995 * Subjects [1] Dada www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/online_a
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