The most notorious art exhibition in Nazi Germany

(Kaiser, Fritz). Entartete Kunst. Ausstellungsführer.

€ 450.00

A guide to the notorious Nazi art exhibition "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art), which unwittingly created a showcase for the most innovative and enduring artworks from Weimar Germany. It includes black-and-white illlustrations of the works by Dix, Freundlich, Grosz, Kirchner, Klee, Kokoschka, Molzahn and Schwitters among others, alongside a pompous and sinister text by the Nazi painter Fritz Kaiser (1891-1974) outlining the plan and themes of the exhibition. These are interspersed with quotes from a speech by Hitler at the opening of the Haus der deutschen Kunst (House of German Art) in Munich, printed in full at the back.

The regime's ideology is made clear: modern art could only be understood as a concerted attack by Jews and Marxists on the soul of the German people. The exhibition is divided up in such a way as to make all the subsections of this attack obvious: modern art's supposed idealisation of the form of non-white and disabled bodies, its promotion of the Marxist idea of class war by depicting the contrast between rich and poor, its promotion of immorality by depicting sexual scenes and "disrespectful" takes on Christian religious iconography. In all of this, it is repeated that the hand of avaricious Jewish art dealers was a driving force.

After the opening in Munich, at which the exhibition attracted more than twice the number of visitors as the simultaneous event celebrating regime-approved art, "Entartete Kunst" toured other German cities until 1941. This guidebook dates from after the opening, as made clear by the lower price of 30 rather than 50 Pfennigs and the text on pages 21 and 29 (the original text had called Richard Haizmann a Jew, which he was not). The publisher's address has not yet been changed to Berlin NW 40, dating this to before 1941.

The "Entartete Kunst" exhibition was infamous as an expression of the Nazi regime's artistic policy, both at the time and afterwards. It collected the work of many of the most exciting painters and sculptors of the day, inadvertently advertising precisely the art the regime wished to suppress, while dressing the whole event in its own rhetoric, at once ridiculous and chilling. Few other spectacles could so effectively capture the duality of Germany between the wars, between the innovative vibrancy of Weimar art and the sinister rise of fascism.

A real piece of history, showcasing many of the biggest names in German art and offering a warning of the dark chapter to come.