A Kurt Schwitters exhibition will be unveiled later
this month at a gallery close to where the artist was interned during World War
II.
Responses to
Place features work made by the German-born artist while he was held on the
Isle of Man.
As a German
national living in the UK, Schwitters was arrested by the British in 1940 as an
'enemy alien'.
A Sayle Gallery
spokesman said he made the most of his time at Hutchinson Square camp in Douglas.
He added:
"It was in fact a fertile and stimulating time and this extraordinary
exhibition reflects this in both Schwitters' own work and in that of other
Hutchinson Square internee artists also included in the exhibition."
Painter,
sculptor, typographer and writer, Schwitters once said in a letter dated August
1940 that "art cannot live behind barbed wire".
However, in the
Isle of Man he was given an attic studio where he worked every day for almost
18 months.
Schwitters was
interned, with more than 1,000 others, from 17 July 1940 until 21 November 1941
at the camp, which consisted of about 40 boarding houses enclosed with barbed
wire.
The Isle of Man
camps enabled the UK Government to imprison people thought to be dangerous to
national security, without charge, trial or set term.
The Sayle Gallery is in island's capital on Douglas
Promenade.
With his one-man art movement Merz, Schwitters is aid
to have influenced artists from Robert Rauschenberg to Damien Hirst and Sir
Peter Blake.
Earlier this year his work was the subject of a major
exhibition at Tate Britain.
After being released from the Isle of Man camp,
Schwitters moved to London and later to the Lake District where he spent the
final three years of his life.
The artist was working on his final creation, the Merz Barn near Ambleside, Cumbria, when he
died in 1948.
Kurt Schwitters: Responses to Place will be on
display at the Sayle Gallery on Douglas Promenade for one month, from 27 September.
Source: BBC
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