The show shows the cool, new-objective look of German artists from the 1920s and 1930s on the life and everyday life of their time.
Vienna (OTS) – From May 24th, the Leopold Museum will be showing, for the first time in Austria, a comprehensive overview exhibition of New Objectivity art in Germany, the country in which the term was established around 100 years ago. The show Splendor and misery. New objectivity in Germany presents the art of New Objectivity and Magical Realism using around 150 exhibits from international museums and private collections. Around 100 paintings and around 40 works on paper by a total of 47 artists, supplemented by archive material and photographs, provide a profound insight into New Objectivity art production.
The New Objectivity
The term art movement goes back to the exhibition organized by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub in the Mannheim Municipal Art Gallery in 1925 The New Objectivity. German painting since Expressionism back. The new art movement stood in clear contrast to the introspective expressive art that dominated before the First World War.
„The traumatic and profound experiences of the World War called for a completely new representation of reality in the field of art. Resignation, accusation and indescribable misery on the one hand, hope, longings and the emerging zest for life of the so-called ‘Golden Twenties’ on the other should describe this epochal phenomenon in a new way – unsentimental, sober, concrete and purist; In short: in a factually realistic way.”
Hans-Peter Wipplinger, director of the Leopold Museum and curator of the exhibition
Left verism and right contemplation
The precise, sober descriptive capture of everyday life replaced the expressive gestures of expressionism, whose individualistic model was unable to reflect the realities of intellectual and political crisis situations. Within the New Objectivity, a politically oriented left-wing direction, determined by critical verism, is opposed to a right-wing current determined by classicist-neo-romantic tendencies.
„At the beginning there were politically progressive, left-wing politically minded artists who translated their pacifist ideas artistically and captured an image of humanity that bore eloquent witness to the tensions of the time. They denounced the double standards of society, especially in modern cities, and made them visible in sometimes drastic ways. Her artistic field of investigation was public space, the streets and squares, the bars and brothels or the factories and backyards. According to the narrative, the depravity of the bourgeoisie and the exploitative capitalists who profited from the war were commented on with biting polemics.
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Hans-Peter Wipplinger in the exhibition catalog
The sober look
The artists of the New Objectivity such as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Carl Grossberg, George Grosz, Karl Hofer, Karl Hubbuch, Grethe Jürgens, Alexander Kanoldt, Lotte Laserstein, Jeanne Mammen, Felix Nussbaum, Gerta Overbeck, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Schrimpf and many others looked at current events with a sober eye and captured what they saw emotionlessly and unfiltered on canvas and paper. In search of ways to process the terrible war experiences and to grasp the devastating consequences of the war, they found their subject matter in the streets of the metropolises, the entertainment establishments of the big city, as well as in the new life plans of self-confident, modern women or in the rapid technological developments Radical changes brought about by progress. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, this new artistic approach was suddenly stopped. Nazi policy systematically defamed the art of the avant-garde as “degenerate” and ordered its confiscation or destruction. Politically unpopular artists had to endure arbitrary searches of their homes and studios, professors like Otto Dix and Christian Schad were fired, and exclusions from art associations and exhibition bans followed. Those affected reacted by fleeing abroad, going into internal emigration or adapting to the system.
The “Dance on the Volcano” as an intensive exhibition experience
The exhibition, divided into 13 thematic areas, is dedicated in a condensed form to an essential chapter of artistic production in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. All facets of the so-called “Golden Twenties”, a symbol of the glamor and pleasure-seeking of that time, are illuminated. Socially critical, sarcastic and mercilessly voyeuristic, the New Objective artists show the advantages and dark sides of nightlife and describe the extremely dangerous “dance on the volcano”. The focus is also on the outsiders of society and people whose existence is at risk.
From the emancipated woman to the old master still life
The show also highlights the emancipation of women, whose appearance changed radically. Numerous portraits show self-confident, autonomous women who know how to use their new freedoms and opportunities. The New Subject artists pay tribute to representatives from a wide range of professional groups in the form of realistic portraits across all social classes. The exponents of the classicist-neo-romantic direction within the New Objectivity propagated a retreat into the private and idyllic as well as a return to simplicity and created idealized living environments using old master techniques. The exhibition also focuses on the still life, which is of outstanding importance in the New Objectivity, with the lack of relationship between the things placed in the room pointing to human existential loneliness and isolation.
Parallel worlds, fairytale idylls and the beginning of the end
The artistic view of the parallel worlds of the circus, variety show and fair is treated in the exhibition as well as the fairytale-like, idyllic worlds of magical realism, which at first glance evoke an uneasy, apocalyptic atmosphere. The appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor in 1933 marked the beginning of the end for free art development. Terrorism against dissidents escalated on a large scale and the Weimar Republic came to an end. Those New Objectivist painters who were close to socially critical Verism were dismissed from their positions and emigrated abroad or to the provinces. The exhibition was held in 1937 Degenerate art opened in Munich. Using 650 exhibits confiscated from German museums, the art and artists that the National Socialists viewed as “un-German” were mocked.
One of many
A majority of the artists shown in the Leopold Museum were on the list of “degenerates”. The Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum suffered a fate that is symbolic of the many lives that were systematically wiped out by the henchmen of National Socialism. Jewish artists were categorically excluded from exhibitions and subsequently deported and murdered. Knowing full well what returning to Germany from a stay abroad in 1934 could mean for him, Felix Nussbaum remained in exile and tried to survive in Belgium. From the 1940s onwards he showed the inhuman horror of the Holocaust in apocalyptic images and recorded the horror of the time in an impressive way. In 1944, Nussbaum was discovered in a Brussels hiding place with his wife, the artist Felka Platek. After their arrest, they were deported to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where both were murdered.
CATALOG FOR THE EXHIBITION
Accompanying the exhibition, an extensive catalog has been published in German and English, edited by Hans-Peter Wipplinger, with contributions from Daniela Gregori, Rainer Metzger, Aline Marion Steinwender, Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Thomas Zaun Schirm as well as an overview of culture, politics and society the Weimar Republic 1918–1933.
Curator: Hans-Peter Wipplinger
Detailed press information and high-resolution press photos
Pictures of the opening in the APA photo gallery
Brilliant opening
The invitation to the opening ceremonies by Leopold Museum Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger followed – in the presence of the Leopold Museum board members Josef Ostermayer and Saskia Leopold as well as the commercial director Moritz Stipsicz – the German ambassador Vito Cecere and his wife Bettina Bundszus-Cecere, Kunsthalle Mannheim director Johan Holten, Inge Herold (deputy director Kunsthalle Mannheim) , Thomas Schauerte (Director of Museums of the City of Aschaffenburg), Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (Head of the International Cultural Affairs Section, BMEIA), Michael Lysander Fremuth (Scientific Director, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Vienna), Aline Marion Steinwender (Curator, Leopold Museum), investment banker Peter Goldscheider , Helene von Damm (former US Ambassador) and Karl Regensburger (Intendant ImPulsTanz), Werner and Hermine Muhm, the art historians Fritz Koreny, Dieter Ronte and Thomas Zaun Schirm, Jakob Jelinek and Jürgen Pölzl (Salon Leopold Committee), the collectors Thomas and Andrea Röder, Carl-Ludwig Thiele, Erich and Monika Breinsberg, Helmut Klewan, Diethard Leopold, Waltraud Leopold and Werner Trenker, Attorney Clemens Schindler (Schindler Attorneys), Christoph Spiegelfeld (Spiegelfeld & Wohlgemuth), Melanie Schernthaner (MedUni Vienna), Katharina Koren (Mars Austria), the artist Peter Kogler, Bernd Ernsting (LETTER Foundation), the entrepreneurs Hyo-Sook Clara Song and Jieun An (World Culture Networks), investment manager Viktor Weinstein, management consultant Thomas Knoblinger (Arthur D. Little), manager Alexander Flatz (Sandorn), Pascal Molina (C-Quadrat Investment Group), Fanny Zerz (Head of Exhibitor Relations, viennacontemporary), Max Appel-Palma (VIP Relations viennacontemporary), Sophie Höfer (Gallery at Albertina Zetter), Stephanie Manz- Varga (LLB), Nina Wöss (Fund F), Cosima Paumgartner (Parfums Christian Dior), Sophie Weissensteiner (Sotheby’s Vienna), manager Weronika Pilus, Johannes Weber (KPMG), Sascha Worrich (Wienerroither & Kohlbacher), Špela Stramšek (Galeria Novak , Ljubljana), Ulrike Gießner-Bogner (OeAD-GmbH), the journalists Eva Maria Klinger, Sabine Oppolzer (ORF Ö1), Hans-Peter Schwanke (Kunstmarkt.com), and many more
Questions & Contact:
Leopold Museum Private Foundation
Mag. Klaus Pokorny and Veronika Werkner, BA
Presse/Public Relations
0043 1 525 70 – 1507 or 1541
presse@leopoldmuseum.org
www.leopoldmuseum.org