Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Kurt Schwitters artist

Kurt Schwitters was born into an affluent family in Hanover, Germany in 1887. In 1919, partly influenced by the Dadaists, he created his own idiosyncratic art form, 'Merz'; his home in Hanover became a Merzbau installation, its rooms filled with the detritus of everyday life alongside larger-scale architectural elements. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1937, Schwitters escaped to Norway and later to Britain, where, after a difficult but highly creative period of internment at the Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man, he settled in London and later in Ambleside in the Lake District.

Born: 1887 Hanover, Germany

Died: 1948 Kendal, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1940

Other name/s: Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters


Biography

Installation artist, painter and poet, Kurt Schwitters was born into an affluent family in Hanover, Germany on 20 June 1887. Having studied in Dresden alongside Otto Dix and George Grosz, in 1919, partly influenced by the Dadaists, he created his own idiosyncratic art form: Merz – a term derived from the name 'Kommerz- und Privatbank' which appeared on a cut-up scrap of newspaper – which united all aspects of his prolific output: painting, collage, sculpture, architecture, poetry, drama, typography and happenings. From 1923 his home in Hanover became his most complete Merzbau installation, its rooms filled with the detritus of everyday life alongside larger-scale architectural elements.

Schwitters' avant-garde work brought him increasingly into conflict with the Nazi regime from 1933 onwards. His contract with Hanover City Council was terminated in 1934 and examples of his work in German museums were confiscated and derided in 1935. Following the arrest of members of his close circle, he was wanted for questioning by the Gestapo and on 2 January 1937 Schwitters followed his son and fled to Norway where a second Merzbau was constructed. Following Nazi Germany's invasion of Norway, Schwitters was amongst a number of German citizens who were interned by the Norwegian authorities at Vågan Folk High School in Kabelvåg on the Lofoten Islands. Following his release, Schwitters fled to Leith, Scotland with his son and daughter-in-law on the Norwegian patrol vessel Fridtjof Nansen between 8 and 18 June 1940. By now officially an 'enemy alien', he and his son were moved between various internment camps in Scotland and England before arriving on 17 July 1940 at Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man. He produced over 200 works during his internment, including more portraits than at any other time in his career, many of which he charged for, and also contributed to the camp newsletter, The Camp.

After his release on 21st November 1941, Schwitters moved to London where he mixed with artists including fellow émigrés Jankel Adler, Naum Gabo and László Moholy-Nagy and the English artist Ben Nicholson. In August 1942 he moved with his son to 39 Westmoreland Road, Barnes, London relocating after the war to Ambleside in the Lake District. With the original Hannover Merzbau destroyed by allied bombing in 1943, Schwitters created a new Merzbau on a barn wall in Ambleside, funded by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After a second stroke in February 1946, he and his companion Edith Thomas ('Wantee') moved to 4 Millans Park.

Kurt Schwitters died in Kendal, England on 8 January 1948. His work is represented in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection and Tate, and many international collections including MoMA. The Sprengel Museum, Hanover holds the Schwitters archive and the most comprehensive documentation of his work and section of Schwitters' Ambleside Merzbau is now on permanent display at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University.

Related books

  • Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
  • Megan R Luke, Kurt Schwitters: Space, Image, Exile (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)
  • Emma Chambers ed., Schwitters in Britain (London: Tate Publishing, 2013)
  • Roger Cardinal and Gwendolen Webster, Kurt Schwitters: A Journey Through Art (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010)
  • Kurt Schwitters, Lucky Hans and other Merz Fairytales (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)
  • Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson (eds.), Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile, c. 1933-45 (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2009)
  • Jutta Vinzent, 'List of Refugee Artists (Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists) From Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945)', in Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945), (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006), pp. 249-298
  • Robin Martakies, Kurt Schwitters: Free Spirit (Ambleside: Trafford Publishing, 2006)
  • Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet eds., Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945: Politics and Cultural Identity, The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Vol. 6 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004)
  • Elizabeth Burns Gamard, Kurt Schwitters Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000)
  • Gwendolen Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters: A Biographical Study (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997)
  • Dorothea Dietrich, The Collages of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition and Innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
  • John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987)
  • Kate T. Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters: A Portrait from Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)
  • Stefan Themerson, Kurt Schwitters in England (London: Gaberbocchus Press, 1958)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Merz (founder)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Refuge: The Art of Belonging, Abbot Hall Art Gallery (2019)
  • Art-exit: 1939 – A Very Different Europe, Ben Uri at 12 Star Gallery, Europe House (2019)
  • Dadaglobe Reconstructed, Moma New York (2016)
  • Cut 'n' Paste: From Architectural Assemblage to Collage City, Moma New York (2014)
  • Schwitters in Britain, Tate (2013)
  • Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum (2011)
  • Avant-Garde Graphics, 1918–1934, Estorick Collection (2005)
  • Kurt Schwitters, Moma New York (1985)
  • The World of Imagination. An exhibition of 'Oodles', Abstracts, Surrealism 'Merz' Sculpture, Constructivism and Symbolism. The Most Advanced and Original Show in Town, Bilbo's Modern Art Gallery (1944)
  • Free German League of Culture
  Kurt Schwitters
   
Ben Uri collection

Kurt Schwitters in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Kurt Schwitters]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Kurt Schwitters] in the Ben Uri Library