Kurt Schwitters: Merz (2016) – Norman Rosenthal interviews Damien Hirst

exhibition catalogue. In November 1945, Schwitters
writes to Alfred Barr in an attempt to circulate the
exhibition to the United States. Unfortunately, Barr had
been asked to resign from the Museum of Modern Art
the previous autumn.
Jan Tschichold organizes a presentation of Schwitters’s
work to accompany the exhibition “Der Sturm (Sammlung
Nell Walden)” at Kunstmuseum Bern, February—April
1945.
After the war ends in June, Ernst Schwitters returns to
Norway; he assumes Norwegian citizenship at the end of
the year. At the same time, Kurt Schwitters moves with
his companion, Edith Thomas, to Ambleside in the Lake
District of England. Schwitters remains in poor financial
condition until the end of his life. During these years, he
earns some money painting portraits, landscapes, and
still-lifes. A friend from Hanover, Walter Dux, who is also
living in London, provides additional assistance.
1946
Schwitters is unusually prolific in the last two years of
his life, producing a large number of collages in 1946
and 1947.
Carola Giedion-Welcker publishes thirteen of Schwitters’s
poems in her anthology Poètes à l’Ècart—Antholoqie der
Abseitigen, Benteli, Bern.
In April, Schwitters writes to Oliver M. Kaufmann in
Chicago asking him for funds to use to restore the
remains of the Merzbau. The following year, on his sixtieth
birthday, June 20, 1947, Schwitters is awarded $1,000 by
the Museum of Modern Art, New York (funds provided
by Kaufmann), for reconstructing or continuing existing
Merz constructions, whether in Hanover or Lysaker.
Unable to travel outside England, Schwitters chooses to
start a new Merz construction, the Merz Barn, on a farm
belonging to Harry Pierce near Elterwater in the Lake
District. The Merz Barn is never completed.
packages of food and vitamins to him in England.
Despite increasing frailty, Schwitters is able to stage two
Merz evenings at the London Gallery, March 5 and 7. He
is unable to convince the BBC to record his “Ursonate.”
Schwitter’s work is included in “The White Plain” at
the Pinacotheca, New York, March 19—April 12, an
influential exhibition of leading European abstract artists
such as Mondrian and Kandinsky and the American artist
Burgoyne Diller.
1948
On January 8, one day after being granted British
citizenship, Kurt Schwitters dies in England of acute
pulmonary edema and myocarditis. After an initial burial
in Ambleside, his remains are moved to Hanover in 1970.
Twenty-six of Schwitters’s works are featured,
posthumously, in the artist’s first solo exhibition in
the United States, held at the Pinacotheca (later the
Rose Fried Gallery), January 19—February 29. Dreier
contributes an essay to the exhibition catalogue titled
“Kurt Schwitters: The Dadas Have Come to Town”;
Naum Gabo and Charmion von Wiegand also write text.
Margaret Miller includes nineteen works by Schwitters
in ‘Collage,’ the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
September 21—December 5.
Clare Elliott, „Chronology”, first published in Kurt Schwitters:
Color and Collage, edited by Isabel Schulz (Houston: Menil
Collection, 2010).
© Menil Foundation, Inc., Houston, reprinted with permission.
Schwitters begins corresponding with Margaret Miller, a
curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who is organizing
an exhibition of collages for the museum.
Schwitters spends the end of 1946 confined to bed after
a hip fracture.
Schwitters renews contact with Katherine Dreier. The
two discuss the possibility of a Schwitters exhibition in
the United States; the result is a solo show, organized
by Dreier, held in 1948 at the Pinacotheca in New York.
1947
Dreier remains in touch with Schwitters, sending
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