Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters, born 1887 in Hanover, studied from 1908 to 1914 at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hanover and the Kunstakademie in Dresden. The long academic training he enjoys in Dresden, especially with Frans Hals-oriented Carl Bantzer, seems to prepare him for a more conventional painting career. His early work shows correspondingly little influence of modernism.
Schwitters was called up for military service in 1917, but since he suffers from epilepsy, he spent it in the writing room and was released after just four months. The impressions of war and inflation that he gained at that time left a noticeable influence of modernity in his work.
From 1918 onwards, collages are created, for which the artist uses randomly found waste. With his art and literary texts, Schwitters founded his own Dada institution in Hanover, which he calls "Merz" - derived as a word fragment of "Commerzbank".
Kurt Schwitters became known far beyond Hanover's borders through his collection of prose and poems "Anna Blume", published in 1919. He made contact with Herwarth Walden, Hans Arp and Tristan Tzara and took part in the "Sturm" exhibitions in New York and Zurich. Schwitter's connections to the Bauhaus artists and to the Dutch Dadaists and Constructivists, to whom he dedicated the first issue of the "Merz" magazine in 1923, became increasingly important to him.

Schwitters has worked as an advertising designer, graphic artist and typographer for various companies in and outside Hanover since 1923. Together with Cesar Domela, Lázlo Moholy-Nagy and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, the artist founded the "ring neuer werbegestalter" in 1927, to which Willi Baumeister and Walter Dexel also joined.
In addition, the collages and material images of the "Merz" series Schwitters continue this professional activity. The first international successes began in the mid-1930s. In 1937 Kurt Schwitters emigrated to Norway and three years later the exile in Norway was followed by an escape from the German troops to England, where the isolated position from which he had already suffered in Norway did not improve significantly. Kurt Schwitters died in Ambleside (Westmorland) in 1948.
However, the international recognition of his life's work only began after his death. Schwitters has a strong influence on the assemblage art of neo-Dadaistic artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg, although he always seemed far ahead of his time.