I finally got to see the Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945 show at Mia. It has just closed, though, so this is now a retrospective, unless you can see it in another city.
I don't have a holistic review, and not even a political one. I think I'm too overwhelmed by the present situation in this country: the parallels are just so obvious to me that it feels extraneous to write about them. Even reading the political timeline provided outside the gallery door felt unnecessary to me. Maybe it's because I watched Babylon Berlin not too long ago, but I felt I already knew what the artists had been living through.
Instead I have a somewhat disjointed set of images to share: the paintings and sculptures that particularly spoke to me, some just in a visual way, others because of their resonance in the context. The works are shown in the order I saw them, and the text for each is based on the accompanying information provided.
Kate Diehn-Bitt
Self-Portrait with an Orange, 1930–31
Diehn-Bitt had her only solo show in 1935 in Berlin. She was attacked by the Nazi press, which called her work "alien to the species." She was then barred from membership in the correct organization, so she was not allowed to exhibit again and later had to end contact with her parents because her stepfather was Jewish.
Marianne von Werfkin (born 1860)
Procession near Ascona, c. 1924
Daughter of a Russian noble army officer, von Werfkin was financially independent and moved from St. Petersburg to Munich. She was a member of various Expressionist groups, including Blue Rider. She emigrated to Switzerland in 1914, finally living in Ascona.
Alexej von Jawlensky
Head of a Woman, 1912
von Jawlensky was the partner of Marian von Werfkin, and also followed the Russian emigre path from St. Petersburg to Munich in the 19th century. The subject and format of this painting was typical of his work, with the colors varying greatly from painting to painting. He was a founder of the Munich-based group Blue Rider, which had its first exhibition in 1911.
Wassily Kandinsky
Hornform, 1924
Born in Moscow, trained in Munich, Kandinsky was a master at the Bauhaus from 1922–1933. His work became more geometric over that time. The information card noted that 1924 was the year government funding for the Bauhaus in Weimar was cut, precipitating its move to Dessau.
Otto Möller
City, 1921
A call was made in November 1918, after the end of the Great War, to "artists who have broken the traditional mold." This painting "combines elements of Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism..." A way of seeing Berlin and its signs.
Alice Lex-Nerlinger
Field-Gray Yields Dividends, 1931 / 1961
The artist became a pacifist and critic of capitalism because of WWI. Her painting condemns "industrialists and statesmen who profited from weapons production and war policy." It was part of the War section in the spring 1932 Great Berlin Art Exhibition. The Nazi press criticized it, and the card speculates that the artist destroyed the original as well as other works out of fear. "After 1933, she and her husband, Oskar, were subject to suspicion, harassment, and even arrest." She recreated the work in 1961.
Wilhelm Lehmbruck
Fallen Man, 1915–1916 (cast by 1972)
Lehmbruck left Germany for Paris in 1910, then returned in 1914, planning to compete in creating a heroic statue of Siegfried, the German hero, for a cemetery. "Instead, he sculpted The Fallen Man, now one of the most famous sculptures of the period. It is universally interpreted as a memorial against war rather than a monument to its valor." The sculptor committed suicide in 1919. Most of his work was labeled degenerate and seized from German museums in 1937.
Käthe Kollwitz
Tower of Mothers, 1937-38 (cast after 1958)
Born in 1867, Kollwitz had a son who was killed early in WWI. In March 1919 she became the first woman member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. She showed a version of this sculpture in Berlin in 1938. "It was removed by the Nazis."
Horst Strempel
Night over Germany, 1945–46
Hailed as a masterpiece in 1947 and called the "altar of the Hitler era." The painting shows four aspects of the Nazis' crimes: the concentration camps at center top, civilians during night bombings at left, hidden Jewish families at right, and the Resistance in the underground at bottom. "In the war's aftermath, the German public struggled to confront and process the era of Nazi terror. Strempel was asked to remove the word 'Jew' from the depiction of the hidden family. The painting disappeared into storage for decades."
Max Beckmann
Self-Portrait at a Bar, 1942
Beckmann was a successful painter with more than 500 works in German museums. When his paintings were seized by the Nazis in 1937, he and his wife fled to Amsterdam, hoping to go to the U.S., but his visa was denied. Then the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. While he was working on this painting, he wrote, Jews were being deported from Amsterdam and English planes were bombing the city. He finally was allowed into the U.S. in 1947, where he taught for a few years before dying in New York in 1950 at age 66.
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