In the first half of the twentieth century, Germany experienced the last years of the German Empire, World War I and the revolution that followed, the liberal Weimar Republic, the rise of National Socialism and Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and World War II. Modern art played an important role in the discourse of the period, while politics influenced the arts.
This exhibition brings together more than seventy paintings and sculptures from the collections of the Neue Nationalgalerie, the distinguished modern art museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. It traces the German experience in the visual arts over four decades. Beginning with the Expressionist reaction and opposition to the conservative artistic regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the exhibition includes works by such figures as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Otto Mueller, and Max Pechstein. The Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement typified the modern style of the 1920s, represented by painters including Otto Dix, Kurt Günther, and Christian Schad. Between the wars, exposure to the abstraction of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Pablo Picasso influenced the German artists Gabriele Münter, Lyonel Feininger, Hannah Höch, and Oskar Nerlinger. Painters and sculptors including Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Käthe Kollwitz, and George Grosz issued strident challenges to society; their voices would be silenced under the Nazis. And response to Hitler’s repression of modern art and political opposition came from Max Beckmann, Karl Hofer, and Horst Strempel. Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945, organized by the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, concludes with an epilogue that examines the ambiguous aftermath of World War II.
