“[Merz] denotes essentially the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes.”

—Kurt Schwitters

Created in a manner that reflect Schwitters’ Dada-inflected sensibilities, the six lithographs of Merz 3. Merz Mappe. Erste Mappe des Merzverlages. stand out from Schwitters’ oeuvre as the only portfolio he ever produced of his own prints. The term “Merz” itself refers to the name Schwitters gave to his collage-based art form, fusing found materials of all kinds – from paper scraps to fragments of overheard conversations – into a range of art forms, including poetry, painting and assemblage. This overarching ethos of collage took center stage in the production of the Merz 3 portfolio, which Schwitters made at the Molling printing plant in Hanover, salvaging recently printed material for reuse. As art historian Werner Schmalenbach described, "Schwitters apparently made use of freshly printed papers of all kinds, which in their wet and oily state he transferred to the lithographic stone, so that he could print off his composition "Merzed" directly on to the stone.”ⁱ

Schwitters’ utilization of found materials like cigarette wrappers, advertisements, and children’s books illustrations to amalgamate the images of Merz 3 reflected the fragmented sociopolitical realities of Germany following the first World War. Some rare copies of the portfolio, including the present plate, additionally have physical collage applied atop the lithographic collage imagery in the form of small rectangles of colored paper. Such collaged impressions are rarely offered at auction and can be found in institutions like Museum of Modern Art, which has a complete portfolio with collage in their collection.  This layering of commercial ephemera – “Merz” itself coming from the second syllable of the German word “commerz” – along with hand-drawn imagery and collage demonstrates how Schwitters applied chance and improvisation to his printmaking process, embracing the irrational and absurd in the face of global atrocities.

ⁱ  Werner Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, 1967, p. 155