The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (310 page)

(1593–1650).
German engraver and publisher. He brought out hundreds of topographical prints of European towns which are of greater historical than artistic interest. Much of this vast output came from the hands of assistants. Among his pupils was Wenzel
Hollar
. His daughter
Maria Sibylla Merian
(1647–1717) settled in Holland and visited Surinam in South America from 1699 to 1702. She is best known for her coloured drawings for insects and butterflies, which are as remarkable for their scientific accuracy as for their delicate beauty.

 
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Merz
.

A nonsense name invented by Kurt
Schwitters
in 1919 for his personal version of
Dada
.

 
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(1831–1915).
Dutch painter and collector. He abandoned the family profession of banking in 1866 and became one of the leading artists of the
Hague School
, particularly noted for his beach and sea scenes. His best-known work is the vast panorama (1881) of the fishing village of Scheveningen—about 120 m. in circumference—housed in a specially designed building in The Hague. The Mesdag Museum, in the same city, contains his excellent collection of paintings, rich in works by members of the
Barbizon
and Hague Schools.

 
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(1903–71).
Belgian musician, poet, collagist, exhibition organizer, and dealer. His interest in the visual arts developed under the influence of
Duchamp
and
Picabia
, whom he met in Paris in 1921, and he was influenced towards
Surrealism
by the paintings of
de Chirico
. He became a friend and champion of
Magritte
and a highly active figure in the Surrealist movement, although more as an organizer than an artist. In 1938 he settled in London and became director of the London Gallery in Cork Street, the headquarters of Surrealism in England, organizing exhibitions of the work of many European artists there (including
Ernst
,
Schwitters
, and
Tanguy
); he also edited the gallery's publication, the
London Bulletin
, an important documentary source for the period (it ran for 20 issues, 1938–40). In his own work as an artist, Mesens was best known for his collages, which he created from an assortment of materials—tickets, ribbons, pieces of paper and print, etc. He made extensive use of printed words to create disconcerting or amusing ambiguities and suggested meanings, some of which might almost be regarded as anticipations of
Conceptual art
.

 
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(1883–1962).
Yugoslavian-born sculptor who became an American citizen in 1954. He studied sculpture at the Academy in Vienna, 1900–4, and in 1907–8 lived in Paris, where he met
Rodin
. On returning to Yugoslavia he began to make his name as a monumental sculptor, working in a variety of classicist styles furbished with a superficial air of modernity. He passed the First World War in Rome, Geneva, Paris, and London. In 1919 he returned to Yugoslavia, where he received many public commissions, through which he expressed his ardent patriotism, and built up his fame internationally as a monumental sculptor, his works including an enormous mausoleum at Mt. Avala near Belgrade in commemoration of the Unknown Soldier (1934). During the Second World War he obtained several commissions from the Vatican and after living in Switzerland from 1943 to 1946 he went to the USA. There he obtained the post of Professor of Sculpture at Syracuse University and from 1955 was Professor of Sculpture at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He executed a number of monuments in the USA. The rhetoric of his large-scale works now seems rather ponderous and his smaller, more lyrical pieces have dated less. There are Me
trovi
museums at Split (his former house, which he designed himself) and Zagreb.