A single black numeral eight on bare cream

One heavy black numeral eight stands alone, set high and to the left of a large sheet of plain cream stock. It is drawn as two unequal loops, the lower larger than the upper, with thick shoulders and thin joins where the strokes cross. Nothing else is printed on the sheet. The paper is left entirely bare around it, faintly mottled and slightly warmer toward the edges, so the figure reads as a shape rather than as a number to be read.

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) was a German artist who built an entire practice from what other people threw away. From 1919 he gave the name Merz to his collages and assemblages, composing tram tickets, wrappers, printed scraps and worn paper into taut abstract structures, and extending the idea into poetry, typography and the architectural Merzbau in his Hanover house. Close to Dada without ever formally joining it, he was condemned as degenerate by the Nazi regime and fled in 1937 to Norway and then to Britain, where he died in Kendal. His work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, Tate and the Sprengel Museum Hannover.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.