Kurt Schwitters
A prominent artist of the European avant-garde throughout the first half of the 20th century, Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) can also be seen as an early proponent of the use of language in visual art. Schwitters worked in a wide variety of forms and media, including painting, poetry, and sculpture. In his collage works, these diverse aesthetic interests all manifest, rendering the word as a visual, textural, and sculptural surface (see, for instance the example above). His expressive and innovative collage pieces are of a piece with his poetic works, which are often irreverent, fragmentary, and explore the word first and foremost as a material object, building poems around play with sound moreso than semantic or linguistic meaning. Schwitters also made important contributions to the history of 20th century visual poetry through his work with typography. Through the 1920s and into the 1930s, Schwitters produced an arts publication called Merz, as notable for the engaging layout, design, and typography as for the content. Schwitters' typographical work also extended into the commercial sector, as he ran an advertising agency, Merzwerbe. Although far from the only European artist exploring sound and concrete forms of poetry, Schwitters remains a significant figure for his enduring contributions to the field of visual poetry.
