The Merz barn building still stands much as Schwitters left it in 1948. Located in a remote woodland in the heart of the Langdale valley in Cumbria, NW England it serves as a symbolic connection and poignant memorial to the spirit and tenacity of the artist who worked there. This project is about the recovery, documentation and restoration of Kurt Schwitters' last Merzbau project; the Elterwater Merz Barn, and the international fundraising campaign that is intended to pay for vital restoration work and sustain the development of the project in the longer term.
Background
During his lifetime Schwitters worked on four Merzbauten: the Hanover Merzbau (1923 - 36); two Merzbauten in Norway: the Haus am Bakken at Lysaker near Oslo (1937 - 40 ), and the Schwittershytta on the island of Hjertoya (1934 - 39); and finally the Elterwater Merz Barn in England (1947). Left unfinished after the artist died in early January 1948, the almost forgotten Merz Barn was neglected for many years until Richard Hamilton arranged for the surviving art work to be removed for safe keeping to the University of Newcastle's Hatton Gallery in 1965, where it is now on public view. The Merz Barn building itself still survives and contains evidence of Schwitters' original working methods and materials.
Product Development
In 2006, with a major funding award from the Northern Rock Foundation, the LITTORAL Arts Trust was able to acquire the Merz Barn and to preserve it in acknowledgement of Kurt Schwitters' extraordinary artistic legacy and international reputation. The Trust is now working with a team of international art experts to undertake a complete documentation and restoration of the Merz Barn, including the management of the associated Cylinders estate and woodlands. To support these projects and the vital restoration work, an international fundraising campaign has been launched, and to date has raised an additional
The Merz Barn project and LITTORAL wish to acknowledge the generous support of the Northern Rock Foundation. Vital project development funding and other sponsorship support has also been provided by; Arts Council England NW, various artist donors (the Merzbarn Fundraising Campaign), and Science Ltd (Damien Hirst).
Kurt Schwitters. Photo El Lissitzky
Kurt Schwitters
1887 - 1948
Born in Hanover in 1887, Kurt Schwitters attended the Dresden Academy of Art and at the end of the First World War made contact with Dada groups in Europe. During his lifetime, he worked across many different art disciplines, creative traditions, art forms and media, and maintained an extraordinary output of collages, paintings, poetry, performance, audio arts, theatre, photography, sculpture, installation projects. Richard Hamilton, Sir Peter Blake, Eduardo Paolozzi, Robert Rauschenberg and others acknowledge Schwitters' influence on the development of Pop Art in the early 1960s. Schwitters' influence on the development of contemporary art, sculpture and architecture continues to be widely acknowledged.
Related Links
Biography www.artchive.com
Schwitters in England; a chronology www.schwitters-stiftung.de
http://www.merzbarn.net/background.html
http://www.merzbarn.net/kurtschwitters.html
... Allí se ganó la vida pintando retratos de los habitantes de Ambleside. Uno de sus modelos, un jardinero retirado y paisajista llamado Harry Pierce, le ofreció un granero vacío como estudio. Schwitters aceptó y, en 1947, comenzó a trabajar en un nuevo collage a tamaño natural que bautizó como MerzBarn (granero Merz). Pierce le ayudó a reunir los materiales: piedras, trozos de vidrio, metal, marcos rotos, una huevera y útiles de jardinería que mezcló con el yeso de las paredes. “Estoy trabajando tres horas al día”, le dijo Schwitters a un amigo. “Pero necesitaré tres años.”
En enero de 1948 Schwitters murió de neumonía. La MerzBarn, a una hora de camino del cottage de Wordsworth, pronto se convirtió en un lugar de peregrinaje secreto para artistas y estudiosos. Damien Hirst recuerda cómo un antiguo profesor en Goldsmiths dio con ella mientras vagueaba por el campo. “Cuando entraron”, dice Hirst, “estaba atestada de montañas de viejo material agrícola; las ventanas estaban cerradas y la hierba crecía alta afuera, dándole una inquietante luz verde al conjjunto. Como estudiante, fue una historia que me inspiró.”
En los sesenta, con la explosión del pop art, se produjo un renovado interés por el collage. Richard Hamilton recibió una beca para tratar de conservar la decadente MerzBarn. Una pared entera esculpida -todo lo que Schwitters había conseguido terminar de “su obra de arte definitiva”- fue transportada a la Newcastle's Hatton Gallery. Pero una vez se transportó la obra, la cabaña fue relegada al olvido.
Más de cuarenta años después, Ian Hunter, un artista de Irlanda del Norte, recibió una beca para comprar la granja. Su fundación, la Littoral Arts Trust, planea ahora restaurar la granja, instalar una réplica de la pared (la original se estima que tiene un precio en el mercado de 15 millones de libras esterlinas) y abrir una galería para la comunidad. Se espera que una subasta en el Royal College of Art el mes que viene consiga las 500.000 libras necesarias para la restauración...
Philip Oltermann
The Guardian
Traducido por Àngel Gerrero para Rebelión
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=84560
Fuente: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/apr/28/kurt-schwitters-dadaism-barn-cumbria
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