In 1929, he visited in Norway. Eight years later, he emigrated there before fleeing to Britain in 1940 when the Nazis invaded Norway. He was interred at Douglas Camp, Isle of Man, then lived in London, and finally moved to the Lake District in the north of England.

He died in 1948 at the age of 60.

Trivia:

• His Merz pictures were included in the Nazi exhibition of degenerate art in Munich
• Three of his works are in Kendal, Lake District, near his English home
• He was never a direct participant of Dada activities
• Was an extremely accomplished typographer
• His best known work as a typographer was the catalogue for the Dammerstocksiedlung in Karlsruhe
• Merz came from one of his collages with pieces of torn-up paper attached to them. One such piece had the letters M E R Z in red capitals torn from the advertisement of a Bank (Commerrz und Privatbank)
• He created art from non-art - bus passes, bits of lino, worn-out shoe soles
• Had a hut on the Norwegian island of Hjertoya, near Molde
• In 2005, his work appeared in the Dada exposition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
• The Kurt Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover specialise in authenticating his work
• Schwitters is now one of the most faked artists of the 20th-century

Selected Works:

• Merzbau (First, now destroyed) (c. 1920)
• Ursonate (Sound poetry) (1922-32)
• Merz (Magazine) (1923-32)
• Die Herbstzeitlose (Sculpture) (1929)
• Merzbau (Second, Norway, now destroyed) (1937-40)
• An Anna Blume (Poem)
• Merzbarn (Last Merzbau, Ambleside, Lake District) (One wall now at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle; shell at Ambleside) (1947)

Collections:
(not listed above)

Museum of Modern Art, New York
Tate, London

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