Looking for Mr Schwitters

Jennifer Potter's new bookresurrects the pivotal artist Kurt Schwitters and places him firmly in The LakeDistrict, where he lived and died as a penniless refugee in the years after the SecondWorld War

Jennifer Potter's new bookresurrects the pivotal artist Kurt Schwitters and places him firmly in The LakeDistrict, where he lived as a penniless refugee in the years after the SecondWorld War. Derided as a 'degenerate artist' by the Nazis he fled Germany forNorway and then Britain, where he was interned as an 'enemy alien.' At the endof the war he travelled to the Lakes with his young English girlfriend. Renownedfor incorporating found objects and rubbish into his art, Schwitters let thespirit of the Lakes creep into his work, dashing off a stream of collages,sculptures, landscapes, portraits, flowers, abstracts and assemblages, which hesold or bartered for essentials. Just months before his pauper's death inKendal, he embarked upon his last masterpiece, never finished, a walk-insculpture magicked from a disused barn in the Langdale Valley. Potter adopts a thread ofmemory and personal connections to tell a wider story about the process ofmaking, and seeing, art. She turned Schwitters into one of the foundationalmyths of her life as a writer. But how true are her memories? Why did this longdead emigre artist take control of her imagination? And what can he tellher about the place she looks on as home? Looking for Mr Schwitters isnot a biography, nor an art book, nor a memoir, but occupies a beguiling spacebetween these genres, a book in its own class. Rigorously researched butwritten for the general reader this new book shines a light on the artist'sfinal years and reclaims his rightful place in the history of modern art. Looking for Mr Schwitters includes black and white images, a full colour section of Kurt Schwitters' art and a photo essay by Rob Petit.