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Course: Tate > Unit 2
Lesson 3: Documenting Conflict- Conflict, time, and photography
- The Berlin Wall and industrial England: Don McCullin's conflict photography
- Kurt Schwitters' wartime portraits
- Traces of illegal migration in Mexico: Mark Ruwedel
- Shai Kremer in an Israeli military training stage
- Burke and Norfolk: Photographs from the war In Afghanistan
- Hrair Sarkissian: Syria's "Execution Squares"
- Key Points
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Kurt Schwitters' wartime portraits
This video brought to you by Tate.org.uk
After his work was condemned as “degenerate” by the Nazi government, German painter, sculptor, typographer, and writer Kurt Schwitters chose to leave Germany in 1937, escaping first to Norway and eventually to Britain. He was one of many German exiles, including a significant number of artists, who were interned in a camp on the Isle of Man during the Second World War. During his time in the camp and for many years later, Schwitters made hundreds of portraits in an effort to earn a living and document the lives and faces of those not on the front line.
After his work was condemned as “degenerate” by the Nazi government, German painter, sculptor, typographer, and writer Kurt Schwitters chose to leave Germany in 1937, escaping first to Norway and eventually to Britain. He was one of many German exiles, including a significant number of artists, who were interned in a camp on the Isle of Man during the Second World War. During his time in the camp and for many years later, Schwitters made hundreds of portraits in an effort to earn a living and document the lives and faces of those not on the front line.
After his release in 1941 he became closely involved with the London art scene, and continued to make portraits of those around him. Take a look at how Schwitters captured the effects of conflict on those beyond the field of battle. What role do you think artists have in documenting not just conflicts and events, but the state of society around them?
Learn more about Kurt Schwitters here.
Want to join the conversation?
- So the man talking was an old German POW?(3 votes)
- Yes. Like the artist, Freddy Godshaw was held in a British internment camp during the Second World War. This is because he was German and living in Britain at the time.(3 votes)
- 9:02Why did the Nazis find Kurt Schwitters's paintings so 'degenerate'?(2 votes)
- Hitler's regime classed any artwork that was abstract, expressionist, blasphemous, or otherwise critical of Germany as "degenerate" -- more generally, this applied to any art that did not directly serve or glorify the National Socialist party or its philosophy. You can read more about "degenerate art" here: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/degenerate-art(2 votes)
- Why is everything so depressing?(0 votes)
- Unfortunately this is a time in Generation of a world war the photos and art your seeing is a way to express this time. Many hope that Art,Stories helps provide insights to many generations to come see how many heroes who fought for the right of freedom and hoping that our own generations won't make the same mistakes as the art shown at this time shows the form of Dictatorship and peoples suffering is also a valued lesson to us all that has to be learned. If this subject is difficult to understand have a teacher or adult go through the videos with you and together you can work together on the questions etc. Of this art lesson.
Hope this helps you
Kindest Regards (P.S I love Disney's Frozen Elsa is pretty cool 😉)(1 vote)
Video transcript
you we were the first transport to arrive at Hutchinson camp pattern square was a lovely green square with with two rows of houses so there's actually three rows of houses they just put barbed wire around nothing had been prepared coach traitors I remember mostly because of his he was a marvelous become too he told my other stories I remember when you know sometimes we were we went for walks in on in Douglas and he was always picking out things to put on his collage you know cigarette boxes or whatever he could find anything he was very happy they did I mean he was well-fed he didn't have to worry about getting his next meal or anything and he earned quite a bit of money of of doing sketches and portrays but a sketchy did of me I remembered I was just walking along a straight there and he's at all hallows and he had a sketch book in his hand he did this in about five minutes or something he showed it to me and he asked me to sign it so you see the cig my signature on it and it I wasn't Freddie God sure then unfortunately my I was named after my grandfather and Gus what do you think would be the worst name to have as a Jewish boy in a German school under Hitler it's just arif so I was at of it singing this is the very important one reshma that lady was a refugee from Germany and she was our nanny and she was the link between Kurt Schwitters and us she introduced him to us because she knew him from Germany from before the war and she introduced him to our parents and subsequently he painted portraits of us the reason the return of me was because I was fidgety Phil I couldn't sit still and i think my parents rejected the first one he did with me and asked him to do another he didn't think it looked like me and as it turned out it looked like me as an older person and he wanted a true likeness of me so kurt schwitters did another one which was the sweet little girl smoke dress or whatever it was on the artist saw me the other way and not wrongly I vaguely have a recollection of not sitting still and always being told off because I didn't sit still and my recollection is with my hand to get it right every time he started again and that was great performance oh it's an important lamented for me it's lovely looking at it yes I can see myself know what I mean and in my hair's changed and I've aged a lot looking at the two pictures of me I can see that I was a mercurial type who wouldn't look the same two days running but looking back at photographs of us at that age we did look like that I