DEGENERATE ART
THE FATE OF THE AVANT-GARDE IN NAZI GERMANY
Stephanie Barron [et al]
Stephanie Barron [et al]: DEGENERATE ART: THE FATE OF THE AVANT-GARDE IN NAZI GERMANY. New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Harry Abrams, 1991. First edition. Folio. Tan cloth stamped in black and red. Photographically printed dust jacket. 424 pp. 750 illustrations [164 in color]. Numerous fold-outs. Textblock slightly wavy due to the usage of multiple paper stocks. Trace of wear to jacket. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out of print. A nearly fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket.
9.75 x 12.25 hardcover book with 424 pages and 750 illustration, including 164 in color and several fold-out illustrations. Includes bibliography, index, exhibition ephemera, and chronology. Oversized companion volume to the 1991 exhibition reconstructed by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in an attempt to recreate the 1937 Munich exhibition Entartete Kunst. This volume contains more than 150 masterworks from the original show, introductory essay and histories of the original show, discussion of museum resistance to the Nazi campaign, seizure and sale of original artwork, National Socialist views on modern art, etc. With biographical information on each artist, register of names and illustrations, facsimile of guide to 1937 exhibition, a room-by-room photographic survey of displays.
Contains biographical information on each artist, a register of names and institutions, an illustrated chronology, extensive documentation on the fate of the works in the 1937 exhibition and those that were sold at auction in Lucerne in 1939, and a facsimile of the rare guide to the 1937 exhibition, with a new English translation, including a room-by-room photographic survey.
Includes work by Max Beckmann, Ernst Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Georges Braque, Emil Nolde, Lyonel Feininger, and many others.
By the fall of 1937, the Nazis had removed 16,000 Avant-Garde works from German museums. 650 of these appeared in a touring 4-year exhibition called Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). Artists like Beckmann, Chagall, Dix, Grosz, Kandinsky, Klee, Kokoscha, Lahmbruck and founders of German Expressionism Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff were included. 150 surviving masterworks were included in a 1991 LACMA expedition from which this catalogue is derived. Essays in the book describe the original exhibition and its cultural and historical context during the Nazi era. A biography of Avant-Garde artists persecuted by the Nazis and the fate of works removed from German museums is detailed.
Keep telling yourself that it can't happen here.