A black bottle shape crowned with horns

One solid black form fills a plain cream sheet. It stands like a bottle, broad and slightly tapered at the foot with softly rounded corners, narrowing to a waist and then opening into a wide crescent that sweeps up to two horns, one taller than the other. Set into the body, off centre and low, is a white ring enclosing a small black oval, the only break in the silhouette. The paper is bare everywhere else, faintly warm and flecked, and the black is printed flat and dense.

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.