Merz Drawing
Kurt Schwitters
German, 1887–1948
1924
A Merz collage by Kurt Schwitters that assembles cut-and-pasted colored and printed papers and a button into a small, abstract composition that treats everyday scraps as the raw material of art.
You'd first notice a compact patchwork of rubbed reds, blacks and grays arranged like a geometric puzzle, interrupted by a printed ‘3’, a matchbox-like label and a real button that projects a small, tactile surprise.
Part of Schwitters’s Merz experiments, this work helped transform urban detritus into a new language of collage and assemblage, bridging Dada playfulness and modernist abstraction and influencing later avant‑garde practices.
Medium
Cut-and-pasted colored and printed papers and button on paper
Dimensions
13 1/4 × 9 1/2" (33.7 × 24.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Katherine S. Dreier Bequest
Accession
202.1953
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
