'Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945: Masterworks From the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin' Review: Capturing Seismic Shifts
A show at the Kimbell Art Museum considers a tectonic period, exploring the way artists including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann and Paul Klee, as well as lesser-known figures, grappled with a rapidly changing world.

Fort Worth, Texas

Contrary to much popular belief, all art is not political. But in the first half of the 20th century—when Germany was experiencing rapid industrialization and militarization; the rise of nationalism and socialism; the defeat of World War I; the creation and swift fall of the liberal Weimar Republic; and a totalitarian Nazi regime that enforced its artistic taste by persecuting, exiling, even killing artists—German art certainly was.

"Sonja"

From Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Christian Schad to Max Beckmann and Paul Klee, artists drew inspiration from the turmoil, turning out paintings and sculptures that commented overtly or slyly on modern life and politics. Alas, beyond these marquee names, many have had little to no exposure in the U.S.

"Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945: Masterworks From the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin," at the Kimbell Art Museum, tries to rectify the situation—and unavoidably prompts reflection on political developments around the world today. Curated by Irina Hiebert Grun and Dieter Scholz, from Berlin, and George T.M. Shackelford, of the Kimbell, this exhibition of more than 70 artworks captures anxious times in various styles and subjects. It's enlightening, not only for offering stark commentary but also because it introduces artists unknown in America, even to many art historians.

Querner's Self-Portrait

Some two-thirds of these paintings and sculptures had never been exhibited in the U.S.; many had been dispersed in Nazi purges of "degenerate art," available to museums only after the war ended. Even then, some were locked behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany until 1992, when German museums that had long been split by the divide were able to merge collections. Based on the samples on view, among the very good artists whose works were unavailable for years are New Objectivity painter Curt Querner and Expressionist Walter Gramatté.

Arranged chronologically, the six themed galleries begin with the unease of Expressionism. Kirchner, whose name is synonymous with the movement, defines it with the crude brushstrokes, abnormal colors and psychological intent of his "Self-Portrait With a Girl" (1914-15). Other works more than hold their own, including Gramatté's "Portrait of Rosa Schapire (1920), whose piercing eyes and uncomfortable pose betray her position as a wealthy, Jewish socialist, and Max Pechstein's brazen, Gauguin-like nude, "Seated Girl" (1910).

Grosz's "Pillars of Society"

Next comes the New Objectivity painters, whose precise, realistic, rather cold portrayals of contemporary modern culture repudiated Expressionism but still irritated the establishment. Schad's stunning, black-clad "Sonja" (1928), in short hair and knee-length skirt, smoking a Camel at a café—defying norms—could be the poster for the style. Across the gallery, Querner's angry, evocative "Self-Portrait With a Stinging Nettle" (1933) was painted after he witnessed a shootout between fellow Communists and police, with the nettle a symbol of resistance.

Unsurprisingly, nationalists preferred German art, but several dealers actively promoted modern art by foreign artists anyway, seen here in a mildly Cubist "Woman Sitting in an Armchair" (1909) by Pablo Picasso, a surrealist landscape (c. 1945) by Giorgio de Chirico, and a lovely pair of loosely painted portraits of architect Adolf Loos (1909) and dancer Bessie Bruce (1910) by the Austrian anti-fascist Oskar Kokoschka. These international styles rankled the authorities, yet they helped shape the work of German artists. Hannah Höch's glowing surrealist painting "The Mosquito Is Dead" (1922); Otto Möller's "City" (1921), an abstract mélange of Berlin's ads, street signs and traffic; and Klee's nightscape "The Ships Departing" (1927) rank among the standouts.

The exhibition climaxes in the penultimate gallery, "Politics and War." George Grosz's acidic "Pillars of Society" (1926) satirizes corrupt, piglike officials, military men, the press and a minister, in a barroom scene dominated by an earless judge. It, along with Georg Kolbe's oversize bronze sculpture "Descending Man" (1939-40), an idealized, nude, striding Aryan, would dominate this, the largest of the galleries, were it not for Horst Strempel's "Night Over Germany" (1945-46). An altarpiece-like triptych, it somberly depicts life under the Nazis—citizens hiding from bombs, a concentration camp, a terrorized Jewish family, and in the small bottom panel a hint of the underground resistance. It was stashed in storage for decades.

Penultimate gallery, Strempel painting in background

The final gallery dwells on the artists themselves. Some, like Beckmann, who was among the many whose art was deemed "degenerate" by the Nazis, fled the country, eventually landing in the U.S. Others, like Conrad Felixmüller, initially bowed to authorities. He destroyed his antagonizing works, but kept a fragment of a fiery 1920 portrait of a Communist, seen early in this exhibition. In 1946, he re-created the entire work, "The Orator No. II Otto Rühle," on view at the end. Franz Radziwill tried to have it both ways. When in 1940 he first painted "Flanders (Where to in This World?)," he had become a Nazi, spinning its ideology in his portrayal of an attack by German planes. Around 1950, after the war, he added American planes and a symbolic crack through the landscape, turning it into an apocalyptic vision.

Kurt Günther's portrait of a boy

As difficult as it is to reckon with the period it covers, "Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945," which closes at the Kimbell on June 22 and then travels to museums in Albuquerque and Minneapolis, is not a depressing show. Visitors may feel—as I did—a need to see even more of what can happen when art and politics collide. History, after all, provides lessons.