A selection of the confiscated art was displayed in a propagandist exhibition called Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art), which opened in Munich in July 1937, before touring across the rest of the country. The aim of the exhibition was to show the public the ‘un-German art’ that was unacceptable to the Reich. The exhibition presented 650 works of confiscated degenerate art that was an “insult to German feeling”. The day before the exhibition, Hitler delivered a speech declaring “merciless war” on cultural disintegration, attacking “chatterboxes, dilettantes and art swindlers”. Schwitters works were considered degenerate art and he fled the country in 1937 for Norway fearing for his life.

When Germany invaded Norway in April 1940, he again moved to escape persecution, this time to Britain. He settled in West London, but the art establishment including Kenneth Clark (then the director of the National Gallery), was actively opposed to German abstract works. It became increasingly hard for Schwitters to make a living and so he settled in the peace and beauty of the Lake District in 1945.

He painted portraits, made collages, integrated into the local amateur art community and took on commissions to survive. Here he produced at least 450 works until his death in 1948. This included the Merzbarn wall construction using plaster and found objects inside a barn. It has been visited by famous artists over the years and had a particular influence on Richard Hamilton and Damien Hirst. As it became more dilapidated an entire wall of the Merzbarn was moved by Hamilton and others, to the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Find Kurt Schwitters work for sale here and more about Hitler's degenerate art here.