OCTOBER 1, 2009 - JANUARY 17, 2010

The Merz artist Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) is regarded today as one of the most influential and innovative artists in the field of experimental art during the twentieth century. From his roots in Dadaism, he was to make his mark on Surrealism and, later, on artists belonging to groups and movements such as Nouveau Réalisme and Fluxus during the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Today, there is a renewed interest in his work, not least among young artists.

In spite of his importance during and after his lifetime, there are many sides to Kurt Schwitters’s life and work that are still shrouded in mystery. One of the reasons for this is that the dramatic events of his life led to long periods of loneliness and isolation. The fact that this artist had such close ties to Norway and that large parts of his oeuvre are linked to this country happened somewhat by chance and is still not generally known.

For the first time in Norway
Kurt Schwitters was an artist whose oeuvre embraced everything from naturalistic portraits and beautiful landscapes to the subtle verses of a songwriter and poet. The Henie Onstad Art Centre is very proud to be able to present this artist to our visitors, according to director Karin Hellandsjø at Henie Onstad Art Centre.

This retrospective exhibition, Schwitters’s art to the Norwegian public for the first time in breadth, by focusing on the whole of his oeuvre and placing the works he created in Norway in a larger perspective.

Entire oeuvre
As the title suggests, the main focus of both the exhibition and the catalogue is on Kurt Schwitters and Norway, but the exhibition is retrospective and provides an extensive presentation of Schwitters’s entire oeuvre, divided into sections representing the time before, during, and after his stays in Norway. An important objective of this exhibition is to reveal and shed light on new research on Kurt Schwitters and his periods of stay and artistic production in this country.

Merzbau
In addition to collages, paintings, drawings, and documental material such as letters and photographs, a reconstruction of the artist’s main work will also be on show: the main room of the Merzbau from Hanover. Together with another version permanently on show at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, this reconstruction is the only surviving example of the artist’s four legendary and mythical works of art called Merz constructions, while the little that remains of the cottage on Hjertøya in Norway constitutes the only original remains still in existence. In these works, Kurt Schwitters sought to combine different art forms into one and the same project, where “staging” was a key concept.

It was not without reason that Kurt Schwitters signed several of his letters with the word “Merz” and gave as his address all the four places where he had worked on his so-called “Merzbau” constructions: Hanover in Germany, Lysaker and Hjertøya in Norway, and Elterwater in England.

Merz
Kurt Schwitters was Merz. Having discovered the word by accident in the winter of 1918–19, he gradually came to use it as a term to refer to all his work, and not just his works of art. For Schwitters, art and life were one and the same thing—a “Gesamtkunstwerk” in which everything he came in contact with was given an artistic form: life, nature, music, poetry.

The Norwegian landscape
Due to his fascination for the Norwegian landscape and nature, and because of the world situation, Kurt Schwitters lived in Norway for long periods from 1929 until 1940—the last years in exile. His production during these years was prolific, and he built two of his four Merz constructions here. Only a few remains exist of one them in the tumbledown stone cottage on the island of Hjertøya outside Molde in western Norway, while the Haus am Bakken (House on the Slope) at Lysaker outside Oslo burned to the ground in 1951. Even though a great many of the other works he produced during these years in Norway can now be found in the Sprengel Museum Hannover in his hometown of Hanover, a large number of his portraits and landscapes are still in Norwegian ownership. It is therefore all the more surprising that Kurt Schwitters’s art has never been the subject of a separate exhibition in this country.

Nature as driving force
A series of chance events originally brought Kurt Schwitters to Norway. But the greatest driving force must have been Norwegian nature. It was this that made him return to this country time and again. Instead of traveling to other European cities or later escaping to the USA, where many of his colleagues ended up when conditions became difficult in the years running up to the Second World War, Kurt Schwitters chose the Norwegian mountains and an isolated existence on an island at the mouth of a fjord in western Norway. He became a proficient mountain trekker, often accompanied by his son Ernst, and he traveled extensively, making many acquaintances on his way.

Artist friends
When he settled at Lysaker outside Oslo in 1937, he also sought contact with the Norwegian art scene. He participated in a group exhibition of international contemporary art in 1938, but otherwise met with little understanding for his abstract paintings, collages, and experimental art. In contrast, his compatriot Rolf Nesch (1893–1975), who arrived in Norway about the same time—in 1933—and remained there, became a Norwegian citizen in 1946 and came to play an important role in Norwegian art.

Schwitters did make a few artist friends, but even such a visionary man and art collector as Rolf Stenersen declined to take action to save his Merz construction Haus am Bakken at Lysaker. Schwitters made several applications for Norwegian citizenship, but these were refused. It was only his son, Ernst Schwitters, who was granted Norwegian citizenship—in 1945. On the other hand, Ernst Schwitters became a leading figure in the experimental movement of Norwegian art photography that flourished in Norway after the war.

Lack of recognition
However, this lack of recognition was nothing new. Earlier on, other leading artists such as Naum Gabo and Claude Monet had stayed in Norway and created major works here, without this having any effect on the Norwegian art scene. The latter was interested in quite different things, and the public did not become aware of these artists until much later. In retrospect, it is obvious that Norwegian art life during the nineteen-twenties and thirties was not yet ready for Dadaism and the experimental, contemporary art exemplified by Schwitters. He therefore remained a loner, only known for the portraits and landscapes that he left behind. Even though he said that he produced these pictures mainly to make ends meet—“bread-and-butter pictures,” as he called them—Schwitters also said that it was only by continually returning to nature that he could preserve the freshness in his work. So these pictures are not entirely without significance, and we can moreover see the influence of the Norwegian landscape in his abstract paintings, collages, and sculptures.

The exhibiton
The exhibition is the result of a collaboration with the Sprengel Museum Hannover, which currently houses the largest collections of Kurt Schwitters’s works and is investing a great deal in managing and researching the artist’s oeuvre. Karin Orchard has been the curator of the exhibition and the editor of the adjoining catalogue. 120 works are included in the exhibition. These are loans from the Sprengel Museum as well as private collectors in Norway and various other European countries.

Organized by the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in cooperation with the Sprengel Museum Hannover and the Kurt and Ernst Schwitters Stiftung, Hannover. Curated by Karin Orchard.

Sounds and pictures from the opening here.