The "Merz Drawings", along with the "Merz Pictures", as Kurt Schwitters calls his Dada collages created from 1918 onward, are considered the artist's most important and best-known work groups. After World War I, Schwitters began to liberate himself and his art from the shackles of academic art and art historical traditions. For Schwitters, “Merz” was not only the name for the artistic style of his one-man art movement, but rather synonymous with artistic revolution and new beginnings.
The Merz drawings, which are actually collages, are characterized by an accumulation of things that appear random at first. Ultimately, however, they are well thought out compilations of relics from a wide variety of backgrounds. In addition, there is an aestheticization of the unusable, the remnants, which, recombined in the present work, make for its artistic aspect.
The origins of some of these relics can still be traced. An example in this context is, of course, the eponymous "MERZ" from a snippet of "COMMERZ BANK". In our Merz picture, 3 paper fragments can be identified: the black paper from a package of ‘Agfa’ film and the label from an ‘AECHT PATZENHOFER’ beer, while the fragment “uviolett” from “Günther Wagner’s Pastellkreiden” provides reference to Schwitter’s hometown Hanover. In 1871, Günther Wagner bought Carl Hornemann's Hanover paint and ink factory. In 1878, he began to use the pelican, his family’s coat of arms, as the company's trademark. "Pelikan" has been known as one of the largest manufacturer of ink fountain pens for many decades. Every crayon in the company's product "Pastel Crayons Type 460 for School and Study Purposes" is wrapped in the same light-colored paper that Kurt Schwitters used for the present collage. Number 2 is carmine and 11 is blue violet, which Schwitters shortens to “carm” and “uviolet”. [EH]