A small green square inside a mass of red

Thick oil is worked across board in overlapping fields. A dense red mass fills the left and centre, brushed hard so the strokes stand proud and crust at their edges, with a deeper crimson bleeding above it. Set into the red, just off centre, is a small clean square of bright green — the one flat, unbroken shape in the picture. Olive green runs below it into a black band along the foot. To the right the surface turns to mottled browns and tans, blotched and pitted, with a wedge of green and a dark navy shape at the top.

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.