Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters - Traditional painting training with Carl Bantzer and Emanuel Hegenbarth

Kurt Schwitters was born on 20 June 1887 in Hannover. His father Eduard Schwitters was co-owner of a store for women’s fashion which he sold in 1898 to invest in several houses to let. Kurt Schwitters graduated from Tellkampf Realgymnasium in Hannover and went on to study for a short time at the Kunstgewerbeschule. In the summer of 1909, he was a student under Carl Bantzer in the Willinghäuser painters’ colony where he familiarised himself with the foundations of Impressionism and Expressionism and took further courses with Emanuel Hegenbarth in Dresden. Although it was a time of great fluctuation in the art scene, and groups such as Die Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke caused lasting turbulence, Kurt Schwitters was hardly aware of any of this during his years of seclusion in apprenticeship. Neither French Cubism nor Italian Futurism mattered to him at the time; he completed his studies without much excitement and married Helma Fischer in 1915. His enlistment in the military only lasted a short time because his epilepsy and recurring depression caused his early discharge. 

Freedom rather than specification, individualism rather than dogmas, Merz instead of Dada

In 1918, Kurt Schwitters met Herwarth Walden and was able to exhibit his work for the first time in the Berlin gallery “Der Sturm”, where he also presented his first “Merz” picture. Schwitters conceived his special collage technique under Merz, for which he combined advertising banners and newspaper clippings with rubbish, in his personal alternative to Dadaism. Greats also represented in the same exhibition included Johannes Molzahn, Paul Klee and Magda Langenstraß-Uhlig. Schwitters simultaneously studied architecture for two terms and loosely sympathised with the Novembergruppe, a radical artist association. Furthermore, however, he was interested very little in politics and rejected in particular any specification to a particular school and its dogmas. Because of this, he did not get along with the politically engaged Berlin Dadaists and had to put up with a lot of hostility, especially from Richard Huelsenbeck, even though the two men had initially been on friendly terms. As Kurt Schwitters was under contract to Herwarth Walden, affiliation to the Dadaists was out of the question anyway, and he was not accepted at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin. 

Escape from the National Socialists to England

Regardless of this sometimes tense relationship with the Dadaists, Kurt Schwitters worked fruitfully with some of their representatives including Tristan Tzara, Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann and was even good friends with Hans Arp. In great contrast to Dadaism, Schwitters certainly understood his Merz project as art, but as such a highly individual art that it suited only him alone. The National Socialists found Schwitters’ work unsuitable and declared it as “degenerate” – a fate shared by Merz and Dadaism. He fled to England via Norway where he was initially interned several times in camps. He was artistically active there too, created the portraits of many fellow prisoners and was finally able to establish himself as a freelance artist in London after his release. 

Kurt Schwitters died in Kendal in England on 8 January 1948. A number of his works were displayed posthumously at the first three documentas in Kassel.