Kurt Schwitters: Merz Art

German painter, author, and mixed media artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) is regarded as one of the most significant artists of the international avant-garde. He studied art at the Dresden Academy, and created the nonsense word “Merz,” to describe his one-man artistic movement after the end of the first World War. Merz, as defined by Schwitters, is a “concept of the greatest possible unreservedness and artistic freedom in the choice forms of expression. Merz art is abstract and characteriz...