Kurt Schwitters Quotes

“Eternity is the best policy.”

— Kurt Schwitters

“This is what is known as perspective, and it is a swindle.”

— Kurt Schwitters

“Take lights and deform them as brutally as you can.”

— Kurt Schwitters

“Inspiration,' the false artist says,
'it just comes to me.' And it shows.
His pictures are as like as the four walls of his room
morning, evening, midnight, noon.
For myself, I have to search for it.
The whole world is your palate,
but only if you reach,
take hold of what you need and pocket it.”

— Kurt Schwitters

“We live 24 minutes too late and that is viewed from the right side”

— Kurt Schwitters

“My name is Kurt Schwitters ... I am an artist and I nail my pictures together.”

— Kurt Schwitters

“The picture is a self-sufficient work of art. It is not connected to anything outside.”

— Kurt Schwitters

My name is Schwitters, Kurt Schwitters ... I'm a painter and I nail my pictures ... I'd like to be accepted into the Dada Club

— Kurt Schwitters

“Art is a spiritual function of man, which aims at freeing him from life's chaos. Art is free in the use of its means in any way it likes, but is bound to its laws and to its laws alone. The minute it becomes art, it becomes much more sublime than a class distinction between proletariat and bourgeoisie.”

— Kurt Schwitters

“When I adjust materials of different kinds to one another, I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form, etc., I play off material against material, for example, wood against sackcloth. I call the weltanschauung from which this mode of artistic creation arose 'Merz.' The word 'Merz' had no meaning when I formed it. Now it has the meaning which I gave it. The meaning of the concept 'Merz' changes with the change in the insight of those who continue to work with it.”

— Kurt Schwitters

“Everything an artist spits is art.”

— Kurt Schwitters

“The medium is as unimportant as I myself. Essential is only the forming.”

— Kurt Schwitters

I could see no reason why used tram tickets, bits of driftwood, buttons and old junk from attics and rubbish heaps should not serve well as materials for paintings; they suited the purpose just as well as factory-made paints It is possible to cry out using bits of old rubbish, and that's what I did, gluing and nailing them together.

— Kurt Schwitters

“New things had to be made out of fragments.”

— Kurt Schwitters

A game played with serious problems. That's what art is.

— Kurt Schwitters

Invest your money in Dada! Dada is the only savings bank that pays interest in the hereafter!

— Kurt Schwitters

“Merz art strives for immediate expression by shortening the path from intuition to visual manifestation of the artwork ... they will receive my new work als they always have when something new presents itself: with indignation and screams of scorn.”

— Kurt Schwitters