Art : Germany

When, in 1947, one of the first postwar art exhibitions opened in Augsburg under the motto “Extreme Art”, it evoked little enthusiasm. The public wasn’t used to abstract art. Under National Socialism, most schools of modern art had been declared “degenerate”. This was the regime’s catchword for a campaign to destroy everything in art that was too critical or too abstract. Thus the German Expressionists and abstract painters were affected. Great contemporary painters such as Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), Max Beckmann (1884-1950) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) were taboo. In 1937 alone, 1,052 paintings were confiscated from German galleries. Battered by events and paralyzed in their development, German artists lost touch with international trends after the National Socialists seized power.