Kurt Schwitters
(Performance artist)
‘I could see no reason why used tram tickets, bits of driftwood, buttons and old junk from attics and rubbish heaps should not serve well as materials for paintings; they suited the purpose just as well as factory-made paints… It is possible to cry out using bits of old rubbish, and that’s what I did, gluing and nailing them together’. – (Kurt Schwitters)
Kurt Schwitters was a German artist who was born in Hanover in Germany. He was also a painter, sculptor, typographer and writer who studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Hanover 1908 -1809 and also at Dresden Academy in 1909 – 1914.
Kurt was highly influenced by Expressionism and Cubism in 1912. In 1918, he created his own form of Dada in Hanover called ‘Merz’ using a range of rubbish materials such as labels, bus tickets and bits of broken wood in his collages and constructions. He is best known for his pioneering use of found objects and everyday materials in abstract collage, installation, poetry and performance.
‘Schwitters’ in Britain is the first major exhibition to examine the late work of Kurt Schwitters, one of the major artists of European Modernism. The exhibition focuses on his British period, from his arrival in Britain as a refugee in 1940 until his death in Cumbria in 1948. Schwitters was forced to flee Germany when his work was condemned as ‘degenerate’ by Germany’s Nazi government and the show traces the impact of exile on his work. It includes over 150 collages, assemblages and sculptures many shown in the UK for the first time in over 30 years.
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