1. The Early Years

Kurt Schwitters’s career began with studies in fine arts in Hanover and Dresden, although his education at the Dresden Art Academy was worlds away from any kind of avant-garde experimentation. Instead, his training centred around portrait and landscape painting, as well as honing students’ technical skills and skills of naturalistic rendering. Although Schwitters did experiment with certain visual motifs, he was still largely unaware of new artistic trends like cubism, Futurism, and expressionism. He would ultimately retain his naturalistic painting style as an effective form of expression throughout his entire life – something that set him apart from other modern art practitioners like Paul Klee, who never returned to a naturalistic style after his early years.

Background: Kurt Schwitters was raised in Hanover in an affluent merchant family. His middle-class upbringing afforded him financial security and made it possible for him to study art. In his adolescence, he struggled with depression and suffered psychogenic episodes – experiences that he would later attribute as having provided the impetus for his interest in art. In 1915, he married Helma Fischer, whom he regularly depicted in portraits, and set up a studio in his parents’ house. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 initially only affected him indirectly. However, the social upheaval it generated would provide the foundation for his subsequent radical redirection. He continued to live in his hometown of Hanover until he was forced to emigrate in 1937.