The Merzbau was an evolving, room-filling abstract construction that the German artist Kurt Schwitters began building inside his own house in Hanover in 1923 and continued to expand for roughly a decade, using plaster, wood, found objects and debris assembled according to the collage principles of what he called Merz art. Growing outward from a single sculptural column into a cave-like environment of interlocking grottoes, some dedicated to friends and figures in his life, it was among the earliest works to treat architectural interior space itself as a single sculptural artwork rather than a setting for separate objects. The original Hanover Merzbau was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in 1943, and it survives today mainly through photographs and later partial reconstructions.
Facts
Year CreatedCirca: source states work began in about 1923; the first room was not finished until 1933. MediumArchitectural interior installation (mixed media environment) 1 LocationHanover, Germany (original destroyed 1943) 1 Destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in 1943; the original installation is no longer extant. The Sprengel Museum in Hanover holds a later reconstruction of the first room. Connections
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: Germany, located there.
Sources
1. Merzbau (Wikipedia, Kurt Schwitters article, Merzbau section)
WikipediaKurt Schwitters article, Merzbau section, first paragraph
work started in about 1923, the first room was finished in 1933
Kurt Schwitters article, Merzbau section, first paragraph, description clause
the transformation of at least six rooms of his family house in Hanover, Waldhausenstrasse 5
Kurt Schwitters article, Merzbau section, first paragraph, final sentence
In 1943, it was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid.
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