By Mike Collett-White LONDON (Reuters) - Sheep bones, nails,
pegs, a scrubbing brush, a metal toy - all, according to avant
garde German artist Kurt Schwitters, are on a par with paint,
and all appear in collages and sculptures in a London show
dedicated to his time in Britain in the 1940s. Schwitters
remains a relatively obscure figure in his adopted country,
where he fled Nazi Germany and remained until his death, aged
60, in 1948. "Schwitters in Britain" at Tate Britain aims to
bring his works to a wider audience, although he is already
acknowledged in the art world as a major influence on Pop Art
and on famous figures like Richard Hamilton and Robert
Rauschenberg. He was also part of the Dada movement and a
pioneer of both installation and performance art, most notably
in his "Ursonate" poem which he developed between 1923 and 1932
and which consisted of repeated sequences of "pre-linguistic"
sounds. Curators and journalists discussing the show, which
opens on January 30, jokingly refer to Schwitters's ar