I’m not sure where I first saw the work of Kurt Schwitters. The Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice? The Cleveland Museum of Art? But I was drawn to it immediately.
The back story of these collages are compelling. He was an early 20th century German artist from Hanover, who like many of his generation, was turned upside down by the devastation of The Great War.
He explained,”In the war, things were in terrible turmoil. What I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready…. Everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz. It was like a revolution within me, not as it was, but as it should have been.”
He picked up scraps from the streets and made art with it.