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Kurt Schwitters has long been revered as the maker of poetic, elegiac collages culled from the detritus of post-World War I Germany, and as the publisher of the journal Merz $$PLAIN_TEXT_PREVIEW$$
Kurt Schwitters as Advertising Designer
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Kurt Schwitters, Postcard invitation for Merz Lecture Evening
(Schwitters pictured), c. 1928.
Letterpress, 5 13/16 × 4 3/16” (14.8 x 10.6 cm)
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Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) has long been revered as the maker of poetic, elegiac collages culled from the detritus of post-World War I Germany, and as the publisher of the journal Merz (Hannover; 1923–1932), but his role as a graphic or advertising designer is often overlooked. Beginning in 1924, his one-man Merz enterprise included the Merzwerbezentrale, or Merz Advertising Agency (later Werbe-Gestaltung Kurt Schwitters), whose clients included Leibniz cookies, Pelikan ink, and the city of Hannover. With the same objective of international dialogue that drove the Merz journal, in 1928 Schwitters founded Der Ring neue Werbegestalter (The Circle of New Advertising Designers), an exhibiting society dedicated to promoting modern graphic design across Europe. In Heinz and Bodo Rasch’s landmark 1930 anthology Gefesselter Blick (Captured Gaze), Schwitters summarized his philosophy of advertising design: each campaign should elicit an individual response and requires its own scheme; and while it is possible to develop rules within a particular campaign, one should not establish standard, general rules for repeated use. Over many decades, I have gathered a deep representation of Schwitters’s graphic design work—some sixty pieces. This group formed the basis of the Fundación Juan March’s exhibition Kurt Schwitters: Avant-Garde and Advertising, presented in Palma and Cuenca in 2014–2015. In 2018, these works entered the holdings of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, as part of their larger acquisition from my collection. Highlights from the collection include:
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Kurt Schwitters, Cover and spread from the booklet
New Formation in Typography, 1930.
Letterpress, 5 7/8 x 4 1/4” (14.9 x 10.8 cm)
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Kurt Schwitters, Cover and spread from Merz no. 11 (1924).
Typographic Advertising: Pelikan issue.
Letterpress, 17 1/4 x 11 1/2” (43.8 x 29.2 cm)
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Kurt Schwitters and Hermann Strodthoff (text), Notice for display in streetcar, for Üstra (Überlandwerke und Strassenbahnen Hannover AG), c. 1929.
Letterpress, 8 1/2 x 12” (21.6 x 30.5 cm) Your right hand on the right-hand handle
That's how you get on when the whistle blows
And when you're leaving, here's the trick
Your left hand on the left-hand handle goes
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Kurt Schwitters and Hermann Strodthoff (text), Notice for display in streetcar, for Üstra (Überlandwerke und Strassenbahnen Hannover AG), c. 1929.
Letterpress, 5 3/16 x 12” (13.2 x 30.5 cm) Distracted conductors might not see you there,
Assuming you're honest, you'll pay them your fare
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Kurt Schwitters and Hermann Strodthoff (text), Notice for display in streetcar, for Üstra (Überlandwerke und Strassenbahnen Hannover AG), c. 1929.
Letterpress, 6 1/8 x 12” (15.6 x 30.5 cm) Inform us of your route and where you want to go
And then pay us, please, with small change, once we know
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Kurt Schwitters and Hermann Strodthoff (text), Notice for display in streetcar, for Üstra (Überlandwerke und Strassenbahnen Hannover AG), c. 1929.
Letterpress, 6 1/8 x 12” (15.6 x 30.5 cm) Your ticket, though it's used and spent,
Do keep it safe, untorn, unrent
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Kurt Schwitters, Poster for Schwitters’s new journal Merz, 1923.
Letterpress, 18 1/8 x 23” (46 x 58.4 cm)
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Kurt Schwitters, Poster for Opel Day: Great Car and Flower Parade, 1927. Lithograph, 33 1/2 x 23 3/4” (85.1 x 60.3 cm)
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Kurt Schwitters, Poster for the 97th Great Art Exhibition,
Künstlerhaus in Hannover, 1929.
Lithograph, 13 3/8 x 18 7/8” (34 x 47.9 cm)
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Kurt Schwitters, Poster for the exhibition Dammerstock Housing Estate, Karlsruhe: The Functional Dwelling, 1929.
Lithograph, 32 5/8 x 22 7/8” (82.9 x 58.1 cm)
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