Merz 3 [Title Page]

1920s

Lecture and recital tours across Europe

Together with other members of the international avant-garde — Jean Arp, Raoul Hausmann and Tristan Tzara — he organises and takes part in tours of provocative evening recitals and lectures in Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands and Germany.

1922

Answers Huelsenbeck with an absurdist story

Huelsenbeck had ridiculed him as ‘the Caspar David Friedrich of the Dadaist Revolution’; in reply Schwitters publishes in the magazine Der Sturm the story ‘Franz Mullers Drahtfrühling’, about an innocent bystander who starts a revolution ‘merely by being there’.

1922–1923

Dada evenings in the Netherlands with Van Doesburg

In 1922 Theo van Doesburg organises Dada performances in Amsterdam, Leiden, Utrecht and The Hague: the Dadaists he invites decline, and the programme is carried by Theo van Doesburg, Nelly van Doesburg (performing as Petrò van Doesburg), Schwitters and sometimes Vilmos Huszár. Schwitters’s solo evening takes place on 13 April 1923 in Drachten, where he later stays often with the local painter Thijs Rinsema and makes collages, probably together with him.

1923–1932

Publishes the periodical ‘Merz’

The periodical appears from 1923 to 1932, each issue devoted to a central theme: no. 5 (1923) is a portfolio of prints by Jean Arp, and double issue 8/9 (1924) is edited and typeset by El Lissitzky, whose friendship proves particularly influential and brings Schwitters’s pictures closer to Constructivism. In all, 21 issues appeared; by numbering, the last is no. 24.