Kurt Schwitters – a German artist’s exile in Britain

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Veronica Davies looks at the work of an influential avant-garde European artist

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) was a major artist in the European avant-garde before the Second World War. He is known particularly for his role in Dada, his use of collage and assemblage techniques and his transformation of large parts of his Hannover home into a Merzbau – he later made similar alterations to other buildings.  Schwitters wrote that ‘The word Merz denotes essentially the combination, for artistic purposes, of all conceivable materials’, the word deriving from the inclusion in one of his early works of a fragment of paper bearing these letters. While ‘merz’ is an invented word, ‘bau’ is German for a building or construction, hence ‘merzbau’.

A room devoted to Schwitters’ pre-war work introduces the new exhibition at Tate Britain, before the show moves on to its main focus, the artist’s less well-known later years in Britain.  Like so many of his contemporaries, Schwitters was forced into exile when branded ‘degenerate’ by the Nazi regime in Germany. He first joined his son in Norway in 1937.   The second room of the exhibition shows works that record this flight, and the generosity of many lenders means that it has been possible to bring together both his more figurative oil paintings and abstract assemblages that responded to the Norwegian landscape, such as Isbreen under Snow of 1937 or the Thunderstorm Picture of 1937–9.   

Also on show is a travelling trunk with collaged lid which the artist started in 1926, testimony to the way Schwitters developed his works even when on the move.  Escaping on an ice-breaker bound for Britain when Germany invaded Norway in the spring of 1940, he arrived only to be interned as an enemy alien, ending up at the Hutchinson camp on the Isle of Man until late 1941.  This in fact proved a very productive period, and he was helped by the number of creative artists and intellectuals who were interned there together.  As well as works produced at this time, such as Schwitters’ portraits of fellow-internees Fred Uhlman and Klaus Hinrichsen, this room includes a great deal of fascinating and evocative documentary material, such as the book containing examples of their work that the internees produced as a gift for the camp commander.

Exhibition curator Emma Chambers stresses in her introduction to the show that Schwitters was affected by the location in which he found himself. He made use of everyday materials such as tickets and the sweet wrappers seen in his 1943 collage Untitled (Quality Street) (Quality Street being a popular brand of sweets).  Moving to London on release from internment, he quickly attempted to connect with the London art scene of the time; his work was exhibited in London and Manchester in the touring exhibition ‘New Movements in Art’, and he presented his performance piece, Ursonate, at the opening of a one-man show in 1944.  Recordings of this ‘sound poetry’ can be heard in the current exhibition.

Later rooms in the exhibition bear witness to Schwitters’ creative productivity in his final years in England: he moved from London to the Lake District in 1945, settling in Ambleside. As well as his familiar collaged works, which were to have an impact on emerging artists later closely associated with Pop art, such as Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, there are a number of small ‘hand held’ sculptures, and portraits of Ambleside residents such as Harry Peirce.  It was on Peirce’s property that Schwitters, despite increasing ill-health, started his ‘Merz Barn’ project, with support from a $1000 grant from MoMA, initially intended for restoration of his European Merz buildings, which proved unfeasible.  Whilst the fragility – and weight – of what remains of this project mean it has to stay in its resting place at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, the exhibition shows two sculptures and a series of photographs taken by students of Richard Hamilton, who was instrumental in its ‘rescue’.

To conclude the exhibition, visitors will experience two new installations, works commissioned by Tate and Grizedale Arts from artists Laure Prouvost and Adam Chodzko.  Prouvost’s is entitled Wantee, in recollection of Schwitters’ companion Edith Thomas who was nicknamed ‘Wantee’ because of her habit of offering cups of tea to visitors.  Chodzko has brought together video, installation and site-specific work to evoke both Schwitters’ international connections (MoMA, the Kommerzbank derivation of the word ‘Merz’) and his final working location in the Merz Barn.

In introducing the exhibition, Chambers spoke of the aim of giving Schwitters’ years in Britain a number of contexts: as an émigré artist, as one who maintained an artistic dialogue with Europe, and as an artist with a subsequent influence on British art.  This stimulating and engaging exhibition has succeeded very well in achieving these aims and should make this late but productive period of the artist’s life more widely known and appreciated.