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Encyclopedia of World Biography on Kurt Schwitters
The painter, collagist, typographer, and poet Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) was the creator of MERZ-art, which is two and three dimensional collage-like works using paper and discarded objects of everyday use.
Kurt Schwitters was born in 1887 in Hannover, Germany. His parents were reasonably well-to-do retailers who made possible his studies at the Arts and Crafts school in Hannover and four years at the Art Academy in Dresden (1909-1914). He then settled in Hannover, married Helma Fischer, served for a short time in the army, and turned away from figurative painting and began to write his first poems. In 1918 he created his first "MERZ" picture. The name derived from a piece of paper with the word "Kommerz"--the letter-head of a bank--which formed part of the collage. He had his first exhibition of these new works in 1919 at the famous Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin, directed by Herwarth Walden, who...
This section contains 767 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
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