Kurt Schwitters was one of the most important artists of the 20th Century. His work was a forerunner to the Pop Art movement and is celebrated by everyone from Sir Peter Blake to Damien Hirst. Yet few know of Schwitters’ wartime connection to Greater Manchester. Heather Ross looks at Kurt Schwitters’ journey to the North of England and how his internment shaped his art.
Heather Ross is a visual artist, current PhD researcher at Newcastle University and Lecturer in Fine Art at The University of Central Lancashire, Preston. Her arts practice-based research is focussed on Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbarn Wall, situated in the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle. Her practice-based PhD project seeks to activate material relating to this structure to provide a multi-sensory understanding of the circumstances and experience that led to its construction.
