Germany 1918-1939: Art and culture

This international "anti-movement" of radical young artists claimed that virtually anything could be art.

Usually translated as ‘New Objectivity’, Neue Sachlichkeit was a German modern realist movement of the 1920s.

An introduction to Neue Sachlichkeit.

Neue Sachlichkeit, (German: New Objectivity), a group of German artists in the 1920s whose works were executed in a realistic style (in contrast to the prevailing styles of Expressionism and Abstraction) and who reflected what was characterized as the resignation and cynicism of the post-World War I period in Germany.

Political Philosopher Dr. Brad Evans explores the concept of ‘Degenerate Art’, a term adopted by the Nazi Party in 1920s Germany to describe art that did not conform to their ideal vision of the world, culminating in the now infamous Degenerate Art exhibition held in Munich in 1937.

How do you destroy an artwork? You can hide it, scratch it, tear it, put a slogan over it, burn it, or, as the Nazis did in 1937, simply show it to millions of people. If you visited Munich in the summer of that year, you could see two spectacular exhibitions that were held only a few hundred meters apart. One was the Great Exhibition of German Art, showcasing recent leading examples of ‘Aryan’ art. The other was the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) Exhibition, which offered a tour through the art that the National Socialist Party had rejected on ideological grounds.

German artist Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix is best known for paintings and prints filled with anguished, exploited human figures representing the turmoil of his time. He lived during the most tumultuous period of modern German history, from World War I through World War II and the division of Germany after its defeat.

We look at five top things to know about one of the great realist painters of the twentieth century.

The Käthe Kollwitz museum web site includes information about Käthe Kollwitz and her art and the impact it has on Berlin.

Overview of an important print work by Kathe Kollwitz.

Born in the Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1867, Käthe Kollwitz established herself in an art world dominated by men by developing an aesthetic vision centered on women and the working class.

In 1905, painter and printmaker Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, along with Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff—all untrained in the visual arts—founded the artists’ group Die Brücke, or “The Bridge,” a moment that is now considered the birth of German Expressionism.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century art.

Today we bring you one of the most influential films of all time: Fritz Lang’s 1927 fable of good and evil fighting it out in a futuristic urban dystopia, Metropolis.

Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten.

Fritz Lang, (born December 5, 1890, Vienna, Austria-Hungary—died August 2, 1976, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), Austrian-born American motion-picture director whose films, dealing with fate and people’s inevitable working out of their destinies, are considered masterpieces of visual composition and expressionistic suspense.

The Bauhau-Archive Museum provides information about the Bauhaus art movement from 1919 t0 1933.

An interactive exhibition from MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) explores the Bauhaus movement, influential in art, architecture and design in the early years of the 20th century. The site contains a timeline of significant artistic works, a collection of contemporary photographs and a questionnaire about Wassily Kandinsky.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts provides an on-line collection of the world's most significant collection of objects related to modern art. Periods briefly described and illustrated include Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, De Stijl, Bauhaus and Art Deco.

This site about Kandinsky has biographical information about the Russian artist, his time in Munich and at the Bauhaus in Weimar, and in Paris. There are photographs, images of his work, and video clips about him.