Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945

Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945 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. This catalogue traces the German experience in the visual arts over four tumultuous decades. Beginning with the Expressionist reaction and opposition to the conservative artistic regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the exhibition catalogue 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.