KURT SCHWITTERS

Kurt Schwitters (1887 – 1948)

Born in Hanover in 1887, Kurt Schwitters attended the Dresden Academy of Art and at the end of the First World War made contact with Dada groups in Europe. During his lifetime, he worked across many different art disciplines, creative traditions, art forms and media, and maintained an extraordinary output of collages, paintings, poetry, performance, audio arts, theatre, photography, sculpture, installation projects. Richard Hamilton, Sir Peter Blake, Eduardo Paolozzi, Robert Rauschenberg and others also readily acknowledge Schwitters’ influence on the development of Pop Art in the early 1960s. Schwitters’ influence on the development of contemporary art, sculpture and architecture continues to be widely acknowledged.

Kurt Schwitters. Photo El Lissitzky

MERZ – Life after DADA

Although not a member of the Berlin DADA group, Schwitters employed Dadaist ideas in his work and in the early 1920s gave Dada performances with friends such as Theo Van Doesburg, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp and Raoul Hausmann. His first collages may even have been inspired by the work of Hans Arp. Schwitters’ first Merz pictures date from early 1919, and in May of the same year, he contacted Tristan Tzara of Zurich Dada in the hope of finding opportunites to publicize these new and highly controversial works made of rubbish. Examples of his work subsequently appeared in the final Zurich Dada publication, Der Zeltweg, in November 1919, alongside the work of Hans Arp and Sophie Täuber-Arp, shortly before the group disintegrated for ever. At the same time Schwitters gained the support of Richard Huelsenbeck, the self-appointed leader of Berlin Dada, who also promised to publish his work, but in 1920 the two men fell out, probably because Schwitters and his Hannover publisher had unscrupulously marketed the Merz poem ‘Anna Blume’ under the name of Dada. Berlin Dada collapsed in April 1921 - but Merz carried on!

Kurt Schwitters in England (1940-1948)

Denounced by the Nazis as an Entartete Künstler (degenerate artist) Schwitters was forced to flee his home in Hannover in 1937 and seek refuge with his son Ernst in Norway. After the German invasion of Norway in April 1940 he was again forced to flee and, for a second time, had to abandon most of his life’s work.

Hutchison Internment Camp, Douglas, Isle of Man

Arriving in Edinburgh in June 1940 onboard the icebreaker Fritjof Nansen, he was later interned on the Isle of Man. Largely unknown and unrecognised as an artist in this country, he lived a hand-to-mouth existence during the war, first in London and later in Ambleside in the Lake District. Undaunted, Schwitters continued working on many of the pioneering art projects that he had begun in Germany and in Norway, and during his last years in England maintained a very high output of paintings, collages, sculptures, performances, drawings, poetry, theatre projects, and publications. Schwitters applied for and was awarded his British citizenship. Unfortunately, then seriously ill he died a few days latter and so was unable to sign the confirmation documents.

The Merz Barn in context

Perhaps the most important of the late works that he produced while in England was his last great Merzbau project; the Merz Barn, a unique hybrid architectural and art installation project constructed in a disused farm shed near the village of Elterwater in 1947. The project remained unfinished at the time of his death, and after years of neglect, the surviving Merz barn wall art work was rescued by Richard Hamilton in 1965, and removed for safe keeping to the University of Newcastle. Although abandoned for forty years, the original Merz Barn building remains largely intact and with evidence of Schwitters’ working techniques and materials still visible on some of the barn walls.

Interior of the Merz Barn, c. 1948

Photographic installation sited in place of the missing end wall Merz Barn art work, c 2008.

Schwitters’ contributions to contemporary art and architecture

Acknowledged as one of the leading artists of the Modernist era, Schwitters also made an important contribution to the development of contemporary art and architecture both in Britain and internationally. However, apart from the Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover and the Merz Barn wall at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle, there is no centre in Britain or Europe devoted to Kurt Schwitters. To try and address this situation, the LITTORAL Trust is launching an international fundraising campaign, initially to restore the Merz Barn, and later to create a Merz Barn museum and Kurt Schwitters study centre. This will be based in Elterwater, near the Merz Barn.

‘..one of the key works of 20th century art
.. the Dada equivalent of Durham Cathedral’
William Feaver.

‘..the most important work of modern British art’.
Andrew Graham-Dixon.

‘My Merz Barn is better and more important
than everything I have done up to now”.
Kurt Schwitters (6/10/47)

Schwitters’ works in major public collections:

Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal - Abbot Hall is an exquisite gallery in the north west of England on the edge of the Lake District.
Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne - The Merzbarn wall is permanently displayed in one room of the gallery and is considered as a work of international significance.
Tate Britain, Millbank, London - Tate Britain is the world centre for the understanding and enjoyment of British art and works actively to promote interest in British art internationally.
The Armitt Collection - The Armitt is situated in Ambleside, Cumbria, in the very heart of the magnificent English Lake District.
The Museum of Modern Art - In 1947, with financial aid from MOMA, New York, Schwitters began work on the Merzbarn in an old straw barn in Langdale Valley.
The National Galleries of Scotland - A collection of Scottish and international art housed in five galleries across Edinburgh.
The Sprengel Museum - The Kurt Schwitters Archive was established at the Sprengel Museum Hannover in 1994, and contains the most comprehensive documentation of his life and work.

See also our links page for more listings.

Chicken and Egg - 1946, Mixed media object: 445 x 240 x 185 mm. Lent by Geoff Thomas 1991 (Tate Britain collection L01738)

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