Art History Lectures: German Art of the 20th Century
Art played an important part in Germany’s tumultuous history in the 20th Century, not just as a reflection of political and historical event but as a catalyst. During the first decade of the 20th Century, Munich was an international artistic center attracting foreign painters of the stature of Kandinsky, Klee, and Jawlensky. Germany was the home of two innovative movements — Expressionism and Bauhaus — which had a major influence on the art and design of our time.
Cornelia Feye, former director of arts education at the Athenaeum, presents a series of four lectures on 20th-century German art.
In 1937, after confiscating more than 5000 modernist and expressionist paintings, sculptures, and graphic works, the Nazi party opened the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich to educate the public on art that Hitler deemed degenerate, debased, and decadent in contrast to the concurrent Great German Art exhibition, which was composed of the idealized representational art preferred by Hitler.