Kurt Schwitters. Le chaos-monde 1918–1948

The exhibition Kurt Schwitters. A World of Chaos 1918–1948 brings together more than three hundred works and documents to trace the career of an artist who made collage far more than a technique. Paintings, assemblages, sculptures, books and archival materials reveal how Schwitters built his Merz universe from fragments of everyday life, then extended this approach to composition into poetry, typography and space.

A ticket, a scrap of newspaper or a found object can become part of a new whole. In interwar Germany, Schwitters developed a distinctive approach through his encounters with Dada and the Constructivists. The exhibition also highlights the affinities between his experiments and Picasso’s: a shared interest in assemblage and in turning ordinary materials into artistic media.

With the Merzbau, this work takes on a new scale. Inside his home in Hanover, the artist built an environment of volumes, angles and recesses, making architecture itself an extension of his collages. The sound poetry of the Ursonate and his typographic compositions take the same principle in new directions: sounds and letters are assembled like forms.

The exhibition also follows his years of exile in Norway and then England. Destruction, displacement and hardship run through a body of work continually made from whatever remained at hand. Curated by Cécile Godefroy and Johan Popelard, the retrospective draws these diverse practices together, revealing the coherence of an artistic vision that defies categorisation.

Practical information
- Open Tuesday to Sunday, 9:30 am–6 pm. Last admission at 5:15 pm; galleries begin closing at 5:40 pm.
- Closed on Mondays, 25 December and 1 January.
- Closes at 5 pm on 24 and 31 December, with last admission at 4:15 pm.
- Free admission on the first Sunday of the month.