"The first anthology in English of the critical and theoretical writings of the great German artist Kurt Schwitters, considered by scholars, museums, devotees, and collectors alike to be one of the most important "thinking artists" of the twentieth century, surpassed only by Marcel Duchamp in his influence on subsequent generations. Throughout his life Schwitters wrote and published in many genres-and across genres. His children's stories and his poetry and fiction have been translated into English, as have a handful of essays. But most of his critical writing has never been translated into English, and this volume even includes material that has never been published in any language--until now. Schwitters was a prolific writer, lecturer, and critic who penned important works about architecture and design, "the problem of painting" (before it was fashionable to do so), media, aesthetics, style, abstraction, concrete writing, politics, and more. Issuing this book will be a major publishing event in the history of modern art and in the history of this extraordinary artist. The translations are superb, making the volume an extraordinary resource for art historians, curators, critics, and artists. Megan Luke's introduction is accessible, and for the first time, a large field of Schwitters's writing is available not just to Anglophone readers but to readers of numerous nationalities who consider English the lingua franca of their work"--

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) was a German artist known for his work in collage, assemblage, sculptural installation, performance, sound, and concrete poetry. Megan R. Luke is associate professor of Art History at the University of Southern California and author of Kurt Schwitters: Space, Image Exile. Timothy Grundy is an independent translator living in Los Angeles.