The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition: Answering degenerate art in 1930s London

Abstract

In the summer of 1938, an exhibition of modern German art was mounted in London. Any political motives were denied but the event was unmistakably a riposte to two series of exhibitions in Germany: on the one hand, those of entartete Kunst, or ‘degenerate art’, the work that had fallen foul of Nazi cultural values; and on the other the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellungen, or ‘Great German Art Exhibitions’, consisting of Nazi-approved art. The London exhibition was largely organized by four women: Noel ‘Peter’ Gordon, a London dealer; Irmgard Burchard, a Swiss dealer, whose contacts were invaluable; and Edith Hoffmann and Charlotte Weidler, art historians. In a defensive gesture, the display was composed of works by entartete artists dating from the late nineteenth century up to the 1930s. Many were works of Expressionism, but examples of Realism, Surrealism and Neue Sachlichkeit were also shown. It was a ground-breaking event, even though conceived in adversity; there was no precedent for it either in scale or style. More than 270 works were listed in the catalogue but many more that were on show were not listed; a total of at least 314 works were lent by more than ninety collectors. Many of the loans appeared anonymously or pseudonymously. Some collectors provided many pictures – for example, Nell Walden sent at least twenty-five and perhaps as many as thirty-nine works – while others lent only one or two.