
Late architect Zaha Hadid's design for the Kurt Schwitters retrospective in Zurich is a curvy interior full of troughs and hollows that she worked on for a year and a half before her death.

The space at Galerie Gmurzynska, within Dada's founding building, maintains the principals of Schwitters' work while adopting Hadid's signature curvilinear forms.

Patrick Schumacher, senior designer at Zaha Hadid Architects said that the installation attempts to "forge a new super-organism" out of shapes from the architect's previous endeavors.

Schwitters had a prominent influence on Hadid, as both were artists who "did not compromise or adapt to outside pressures," according to the gallery's CEO.

German Schwitters was most famous for his collages, called Merz Pictures, which incorporated fragments from packaging and newspapers and paved the way for Pop Art. "Untitled (Oval)", 1925/26.

But the artist's life work were the "Merzbau" he created at his home in Hanover (pictured) and later in Norway. The Merzbau were a sort of giant, walk-in composition, an architectural-sculptural hybrid that incorporated everyday objects in jagged, straight lines.

The name "Merz" is a fragment in itself, a random cut off from the German word "Kommerz", commerce -- perhaps a dig at the 20th century's new materialism. "The Double Picture Merz picture", (Assemblage), 1942. Relief, oil and gilded wood on canvas on gilded wood.

Schwitters was a pioneering Dadaist, an avant-garde, anti-establishment movement that began life in 1916 at this building in Zurich. Fittingly, it's the same complex as Galerie Gmurzynska where his retrospective is celebrated.

In 1922 Schwitters met El Lissitzky (1890-1941), an important figure in the Russian avant-garde whose innovative techniques influenced much of 20th century graphic design. For this fragmented double portrait of Schwitters made in 1924/5, El Lissitzky layered up photographic negatives during the printing process.

Schwitters spent much of his later life in the Lake District in northwest England, where in 1948 he constructed this "Merz Barn" in a remote woodland. He set about creating it after his life's work, the original Merzbau in Hanover, was destroyed in World War II. After it was badly damaged in a storm, Galerie Gmurzynska has provided a $35,000 grant to save it.