I Build My Time. The last years of Kurt Schwitters - ACE053.2

Examples of the collage work of Kurt Schwitters, including The Hitler Gang (1944). Newspaper obituary on "Artist Who Annoyed the Nazis". Tombstone of "Kurt Schwitters, 1887-1948, Creator of Merz" in the cemetery at Ambleside. Railway station. Commentary says that Schwitters arrived in the Lake District on June 26th, 1945. Feaver with Edith Thomas, Schwitters’s former companion. Photographs of Thomas and Schwitters. Thomas explains how she got to know Schwitters. Examples of Schwitters’s abstract paintings. Thomas’s VO explaining that she then only knew classical English painters and was thrilled to see Schwitters’s abstract work. Thomas talking about the "feeling of relief and adventure" they had on their arrival in the Lake District. Bus travelling in rain along lakeside road. Commentary talking about Schwitters being a leading figure in the inter-war Dada movement, but believing that "the most derelict, unpromising materials could be salvaged, reorganised, and shown to be beautiful". Details from Merzbild mit Regenbogen / Merz Picture with Rainbow (1939), painted on plywood; other examples of Schwitters’s "Merz" work. Bus. Commentary explains that Schwitters came to England in 1940, was interned on the Isle of Man, went to London, and finally to the North of England with Edith Thomas. The house in Ambleside where they took lodgings. Thomas talks about arriving and meeting the landlady. Interior of the house. View from the window. Thomas talks about their life there, and Schwitters’s working methods. Thomas and Feaver walking beside a lake. Commentary and Thomas VO talking about objects that Schwitters collected, paper, bus-tickets, string, etc. Collages from the late 1940s. Views around Ambleside. Commentary says he made a living producing portraits and landscapes. A landscape painting; The Mill Wheel and original. Ambleside Bridge House where Schwitters exhibited and sold his work. Two more landscapes. Street scenes; bookshop; cinema; Central Café. Portraits of Mr O’Neill café owner, and Mr Routledge, retired woodcutter; Mr Bickerstaff, teacher at Ambleside Elementary School. Harry Bickerstaff with Thomas and Feaver; talks about his impressions of Schwitters. Bickerstaff says that Schwitters’s collages were "laughed at", though his portraits, especially that of Dr George Ainslie Johnston (1946), were "much admired". Bickerstaff talking about Schwitters winning prizes at the local flower show. Paintings of vases of flowers.