Facsimile of the Hjertøya Schwittershytta

In Spring 2009, Factum Arte and Factum Foundation started the project to record and make an exact facsimile of Kurt Schwitters’ only surviving Merzbau in Norway. Working with the Romsdal Museum and Littoral Arts, the facsimile was made to contribute to the original’s preservation by also providing a record of its conservation state and also to help raise funding for the preservation of Schwitters’ last Merzbau in Elterwater, UK.

“Do you remember it, our beloved Hjertøya?”
– Kurt Schwitters, writing to Helma Schwitters

Schwitters built this Merzbau (‘Merz building’) between 1934 and 1939 during his time as a refugee in Norway, where he was forced to flee when Nazi-ruled Germany labelled his art as ‘degenerate’. The only other Norwegian Merzbau (known as Haus am Bakken, or the House on the Slope) in Lysaker was destroyed in a fire in 1951, making the preservation of the Hjertøya Schwittershytta imperative.

In May 2008, Adam Lowe and Alicia Guirao del Fresno travelled to the island to carry out a full high-resolution photographic and video documentation of the exterior and the interior of the potato-storage stone hut, where Schwitters amassed a collection of found objects that turned the small building into a three-dimensional collage. Scraps of paper from art magazines, advertisements and ferry timetables were glued to the walls and doors, and much of it was still intact despite 50 years of neglect and cold weather.

Recording the Hjertøya Schwittershytta © Alicia Guirao del Fresno | Factum Arte

After carrying out the recording, the team at Factum Arte worked on making an exact facsimile of the part of the entrance hall, completed with copies of all the objects, papers and found items that decorate the interior and the door – among them, a page torn from an art book that reproducing Bernard von Orley’s Portrait of Margaret of Austria, copies of ferry timetables and much more. The facsimile of the Schwittershytta was temporarily installed at the Royal College of Arts in London in May 2009, as part of a fundraising exhibition initiative by Littoral Arts for the preservation of the artist’s last Merzbau in Elterwater, UK.

In 2010, the initiative Kurt Schwitters and Norway, led by the Romsdal Museum, the Henie Onstad Art Centre and Sparebankstiftelsen DNB, aimed at rediscovering and disseminating Schwitters’ life in Norway, and Factum Arte’s facsimile was installed in the Henie Onstad Art Centre in Oslo as part of a permanent display about the artist.

The original Schwittershytta was later dismantled, restored and reassembled outside the new Krona building at the Romsdal Museum in Molde, where it has been open to the public since 2019.

You can learn more on the project on Factum Arte‘s website.