Kurt Schwitters made large numbers of small collages and more substantial assemblages in this medium. He is said to have extracted the word Merz from the name Commerz Bank which appeared on a piece of paper in one of his collages.
Schwitters founded a dada group in Hanover where he was based from 1919. There he created his first Merzbau (Merz building). This was his own house, which he filled with about forty ‘grottoes’ – constructions actually attached to the interior fabric of the building and even extending through windows.
In 1937 after his work had been included in the Degenerate Art Exhibition he fled Germany for Norway. There he created a second Merzbau. In 1940 he found refuge in England where he started a third Merzbau at Ambleside in the Lake District. The first Merzbau was destroyed in the Second World War, the second by fire in 1951 and the third was left unfinished at his death in 1947. It is now preserved in the Hatton Gallery of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
