Kurt Schwitters and the Cumbrian Connection

For those planning a trip in the near future to that big Olympic capital that is London - Kurt Schwitters has a retrospective on at the Tate Britain 30 January - 12 May this year. 

Schwitter's Merz Barn Artwork in Cumbria

He based himself in Cumbria towards the end of his life of which the Tate says:
"In 1945 Schwitters relocated to the Lake District. Inspired by the rural Cumbrian landscape, he began to incorporate natural objects into his work, as shown in a group of small sculptures including Untitled (Opening Blossom) 1942– 5 which he considered to be among his finest British pieces. The move also culminated in the creation of his last great sculpture and installation, the Merz Barn, a continuation of the Hanover Merzbau; an architectural construction considered to be one of the key lost works of European modernism. The exhibition concludes with an exploration of Schwitters’s lasting legacy through commissions by artists Adam Chodzko and Laure Prouvost made in collaboration with Grizedale Arts."

and the Telegraph says:
“When Mary Burkett became director of Kendal’s Abbot Hall Gallery in the late Fifties, she was astonished to learn of Schwitters’s association with the area. No one, it seems, had any recollection of the German artist who had lived in Ambleside only a decade before. When she finally discovered the whereabouts of the Merz Barn [at Elterwater], and went back to confront those who denied knowledge of Schwitters, they were dumbfounded. ‘I thought you meant an artist,’ said one. ‘Not a madman.’”

More on the exhibition here