Kurt Schwitters Biography
Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) was an influential painter, sculptor, designer and writer of the early 20th century. He grew up in Germany, where he first attended the School of Arts and Crafts before moving on to the Dresden Academy. His initial artwork displayed strong post-impressionist elements. But with the advent of World War I, his art underwent a profound change, adopting a darker expressionist aesthetic and including Dada elements. Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch and Hans Arp were avant-garde artists in Berlin with whom he became friends. He was strongly influenced by them and by the Dada movement even though he was never formally part of it.
From the “found objects,” Schwitters began creating collages he called Merz, which would later become his best-known pieces. In these pieces, Schwitters attempted to make sense of the rapidly transforming and fragmenting post-war atmosphere using magazine clippings, trash, and other repurposed materials. With the publication of An Anna Blume, a mock Romantic Dada poem, and his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Der Sturm, Schwitters' fame began to rise in 1919. During the interwar years, Schwitters began to travel and lecture and debates about his work.
Schwitters then fled to Norway in 1937 as the Nazi Party grew in power in Germany but was forced to abandon it as early as 1940 due to the Nazi invasion. After being interned on the Isle and Man, he resided briefly in London before moving to the Lake District in the north-west of England. Late in life, to support himself and his collage work, he created realistic landscapes and portraits. Schwitters is considered to have had a significant influence on many artists, notably Ed Ruscha, Damien Hirst and Robert Rauschenberg. Due to his diversified production he is also considered by critics as a precursor of postmodernism, Happening, pop art, multimedia art and postmodernism.
