kurt switters
Kurt Schwitters fled Germany following Hitler’s persecution of “degenerate” artists, and spent the last years of his life in Ambleside, Cumbria. The steps of the Bridge House was one of the places he used to display his paintings. He is now the subject of an exhibition at the Tate Britain.
The years immediately after World War I were filled with great ferment and experimentation. In this climate, poet, artist, and photographer Kurt Schwitters developed his own unique aesthetic, which he called “Merz”. The concept was based on assemblage - the combining of ordinary objects with artistic elements. For Schwitters, Merz was an attempt to achieve freedom from all social, political, and cultural fetters. Construction for Noble Ladies is one of Schwitters’s large-scale reliefs known as Merzbilder (Merz pictures). It is revolutionary in its incorporation of everyday detritus - a funnel, broken wheels, a flattened metal toy train, and a ticket for shipping a bicycle by train - yet like other Merzbilder, it remains an elegantly composed picture. A traditional portrait of a “noble lady” in profile, turned on her side and facing upward, is also included. These various found materials, seemingly whimsical and casual, are transformed into formal artistic elements by their arrangement according to Cubist principles. Embedded in the composition are hints of a narrative.
About 1920 Schwitters conceived the idea of building a cathedral of everyday objects. He built this three-dimensional assemblage, called Merzbau (“Merz building”), into his house in Hannover and continued to add to it for 16 years until there was little room left in the house for anything else. Unfortunately, it was destroyed during World War II.
Kurt Schwitters, (born June 20, 1887, Hannover, Ger.—died Jan. 8, 1948, Little Langdale, Westmorland, Eng.), German Dada artist and poet, best known for his collages and relief constructions.
Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography, and what came to be known as installation art. He is most famous for his collages, called Merz Pictures.
Schwitters applied as early as October 1940 for release (with the appeal written in English: “As artist, I can not be interned for a long time without danger for my art”), [51] but he was refused even after his fellow internees began to be released.
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany.
After studying art at the Dresden Academy alongside Otto Dix and George Grosz, (although Schwitters seems to have been unaware of their work, or indeed of contemporary Dresden artists Die Brücke), 1909–15, Schwitters returned to Hanover and started his artistic career as a post-impressionist. In 1911 he took part in his first exhibition, in Hanover. As the First World War progressed his work became darker, gradually developing a distinctive expressionist tone.
Associated with the Dada movement, painter, poet, and mixed-media artist Kurt Schwitters is best known for his collage and assemblage works in which he transformed appropriated imagery and text from print media into dynamic and layered compositions. Schwitters studied at the Dresden Academy of Art with Otto Dix and George Grosz, and after showing in Berlin in 1918 was introduced to Dadaists Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, and Jean Arp. It was at this time he began making assemblages from materials found discarded on the streets of his home city, Hannover, intending to reflect the ruined state of German culture; he called the works Merzbilder after the German word “Kommerz,” as in Merzbild 1A. The mental doctor (1919). Unlike the Berlin Dadaists, however, Schwitters’ main concern was art-making, not political activism, and he is remembered best for his innovative use of mixed-media and masterful sense of composition.
Associated with the Dada movement, painter, poet, and mixed-media artist Kurt Schwitters is best known for his collage and assemblage works in which he transformed appropriated imagery and text from print media into dynamic and layered compositions. Schwitters studied at the Dresden Academy of Art with Otto Dix and George Grosz, and after showing in Berlin in 1918 was introduced to Dadaists Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, and Jean Arp. It was at this time he began making assemblages from materials found discarded on the streets of his home city, Hannover, intending to reflect the ruined state of German culture; he called the works Merzbilder after the German word “Kommerz,” as in Merzbild 1A. The mental doctor (1919). Unlike the Berlin Dadaists, however, Schwitters’ main concern was art-making, not political activism, and he is remembered best for his innovative use of mixed-media and masterful sense of composition.
References:
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Kurt-Schwitters
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schwitters
http://www.wikiart.org/en/kurt-schwitters
http://www.artsy.net/artist/kurt-schwitters
http://imochat.ru/en/zhivoi-zhurnal-lena-miro-chitat-onlain-svezhii-blogi-leny-miro/