Portrait of Kurt Schwitters by El Lissitzky, 1929.

GOODBYE KURT SCHWITTERS

by Matt Gonzalez

“I use any material the picture demands.” Kurt Schwitters, 1920.

Today marks the conclusion of an important Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) retrospective, the first in the United States in over 25 years. Limited to three exhibition venues: the Princeton University Art Museum, the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, and finally the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA), Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage presents over 80 works by the 20th Century German born artist whose versatility spanned a variety of artistic mediums including painting, collage, sculpture, assemblage, and typographical work.

Although associated with Dada throughout his life, Schwitters resolved to be his own movement. He called it Merz from a fragment of a phrase, which originally spelled Kommerz und Privatbank, he had cut out of a newspaper advertisement and incorporated into one…