I was born on the 20th of June 1887 and died on January the 8th 1948I worked in many different and exciting ways includin Merz, Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, collage, sculpture, typography and what came to be known as installations.Though i did not directly join in on the Dada groups activities, i did employ Dada ideas in my work, my Merz pieces are art pieces built up of found objects; some were very small, some took the form of large constructions, or what would later in the 20th century be called installations.i conceived the idea of building a cathedral of everyday objects. I built this three-dimensional assemblage, called Merzbau and now the Sprengel Museum in Hanover has a reconstruction of it. Merzbau was a redesign of at least four rooms in Schwitters's house in Hanover. (These were not in my apartment, but on the ground floor, in the attic and possibly in the basement.) My original Merzbau was destroyed in an air raid during World War II. Merz is derived from the name of the Commerzbank.Although at the time of the DaDa movement i wasnt officially recognised as a member i think it is safe to say that i am now recognised as probably one of the most imortant DaDaists. I was a bit rougher round the eges but my collages are raw in a very specific way. in a 2005 exposition on DaDa at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris the establishment further acknowledged my status as a member of the larger movement by devoting an entire section of this exhibition to my work.In January 1937 i fled to Norway, and in the same year, my Merz pictures were included in the Nazi exhibition of degenerate art (entartete Kunst) in Munich. i started a second Merzbau while in exile in Oslo, Norway in 1937 but it just wasnt the same so i had to abandon it in 1940 when the Nazis invaded; this Merzbau was subsequently destroyed in a fire in 1951. My hut on the Norwegian island of Hjertoya, near Molde, is also frequently regarded as a Merzbau.I fled to England, and was initially interned in Douglas Camp on the Isle of Man. i then spent time in London. Then in 1945 i moved to the Lake District the most beautiful part of the world. In 1947, i began to work on the last Merzbau sculpture in a barn near to my house, which he called the Merzbarn. One wall of this structure is now in the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle.I died in Kendal, England, and i was buried in Ambleside. My grave was unmarked until 1966 when a stone was erected with the inscription Kurt Schwitters – Creator of Merz. The stone remains as a memorial even though my body was later disinterred and reburied in Hannover, Germany, my grave being marked with a marble copy of my 1929 sculpture Die Herbstzeitlose.
