Kurt Schwitters Creator of Merz, Ambleside, Cumbria
N 54° 25.805 W 002° 58.029
30U E 502131 N 6031375
Kurt Schwitters, born in Hanover, has two headstones, one in Ambleside, Lake District. Creator of MERZ (collage) form of art.
Waymark Code: WMHH9
Location: North West England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 07/16/2006
Views: 67
There is scarcely an artist working with materials other than paint who does not refer to Schwitters in some way. In his bold and wide-ranging experiments he can be seen as the grandfather of Pop Art, Happenings, Concept Art, Fluxus, multimedia art and post-modernism.
Kurt Schwitters fled from Germany to Norway to then escape to England. And after a short internment, left London to live near Ambleside in the Lake District.
Was a student at the Dresden Academy of Art. After exhibiting at Sturm Gallery in Berlin, he began making assemblages from scraps of refuse, including one he called the Merz picture. Subsequently he referred to all his work as Merz.
Schwitters was offered a stone barn near Little Langdale, Cumbria, to create his work on its walls. At his death he had completed only one wall, now to be found in Newcastle University, England. Sadly, no other of Schwitters extraordinary Merzbau constructions have survived. See links
Headstone is made of local green slate. Follow breaks behind other rows of headstones, to get to BACK of headstone, as headstones are laid out in rows 4 deep.
There is an annual event in Ambleside and Langdale to celebrate his life and work. In 2006, the MERZ barn and land around it, was purchased with a view to creating a tribute to Schwitters. Read story in local paper. (
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Located on the Cylinders estate, Elterwater.
Project : Kurt Schwitters in England
Plans to keep legacy of his work topical
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Wikipedia entry (
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biography (
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Kurt Schwitters Poems (
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Book published in 2006 by local author Robin Martakies (
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Will need a GPSr to find this one, all headstones look the same!