Author Description

Although Kurt Schwitters was one of the most influential artists of international Modernism, only select portions of his immensely varied body of pictorial work have been investigated thoroughly. And what a body of work it is, unlike one ever seen before or after, combining bits of found detritus into compositions of tight, unexpected melodies and startling tunes. Schwitters was constantly sighting scraps of handbills, train tickets, newspapers, clothing and more on the city streets, pocketing them for later use in one of his Merz collages. His intense body of found object constructions stands as one of the premier examples of the ultimtate modern form, assemblage, of which he has been called the “grandfather.” After extensive research worldwide and a complete examination of his artistic estate, Schwitters's oeuvre has finally been properly acknowledged, documented, and prepared for public presentation. The comprehensive Kurt Schwitters Catalogue Raisonné, of which the present volume is the third and final installation, includes more than four thousand works from the period between 1905 and 1948, many of them published for the first time. Lost and destroyed works are documented whenever possible. For ease of reference, the survey is ordered chronologically; within each year, works are sub-divided according to genre. In this third volume are presented creations spanning Schwitters' years in exile, 1937 to 1948, when he escaped Nazi Germany to live first in Norway and then in England. Though artworks are primarily reproduced in black-and-white, each volume of the catalogue also presents color reproductions of representative works.