Kurt schwitters short biography
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Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters performs Ursonate in London, 1944. | |
| Born | June 20, 1887(1887-06-20) Hanover, Germany |
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| Died | January 8, 1948(1948-01-08) (aged 60) Kendal, Cumbria, England |
| Web | UbuWeb Sound, UbuWeb, Dada Companion, Wikipedia |
| Collections | MoMA |
Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) was a painter, sculptor, designer and writer and worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography, and what came to be known as installation art. Between 1923-32, Schwitters edited the magazine Merz.
Life and work[edit]
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Kurt Schwitters' last Merzbau: The Elterwater Merz Barn
Who was Kurt Schwitters?
Kurt Schwitters was born in Hanover in 1887, and completed a conventional course of study at various institutions, including the Dresden Academy of Art. He married his cousin Helma in 1915, and served briefly in the army in a clerical capacity in 1917 before being discharged on grounds of health. He suffered from intermittent attacks of epilepsy throughout his life.
Obviously that is not everything that could be said about Kurt Schwitters.
The family house in Waldhausensrtasse
Kurt and Helma, 1918. Photos courtesy of the Kurt und Ernst Schwitters Archiv, Sprengel Museum, Hanover.
The defeat of Germany in 1918 brought with it violent changes, with the collapse not only of the economy but also of old notions and idealisms. This was particularly true in the visual arts where, added to the general sense of disillusion, there was also the impact of the popularisation of phot
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Kurt Schwitters 1887-1948
Kurt Schwitters' Art of Redemption
Kurt Schwitters was one of the most engaging mavericks of the art of the 20th century. His art is invariably grouped with Dada, although personal clashes prevented him from being admitted formally to membership, and by nature he would never be fully committed to any collective movement, even one of protest: his lack of interest in politics set him apart from the main group of German Dadas, as did his residence in Hanover rather than Berlin. Yet paradoxically Schwitters was intrinsically a Dada: the Dada poet Tristan Tzara wrote that Schwitters was "one of those personalities whose inner structure was always Dada by nature. He would still have been Dada even if the Dada call had not been sounded." By 1918, at the age of 31, he had discovered that he was not at heart a painter, but that for him the essence of art lay in the combination of existing materials. In 1919 he named his personal form of collage "