Research an Artist

Research Activity

The Nazis removed over 16,000 works of modern art from museums in Germany.
These pieces were deemed unacceptable to Nazi ideology. At the same time, 650 of these works, taken from over thirty museums, were selected for a public exhibit, Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). The goal of the exhibit was to increase public disgust and hatred for art that was “ruining” German culture. The exhibit was wildly popular and was seen by nearly three million viewers. The exhibit begun in Munich and then traveled to eleven other cities in Germany and Austria.

The following list is a sample of the artists exhibited in Entartete Kunst (1937). The exhibition featured more than one hundred artists.

Jankel Adler
Ernst Barlach
Max Beckmann
Marc Chagall
Lovis Corinth
Otto Dix
Max Ernst
Lyonel Feininger
George Grosz
Erich Heckel
Karl Hofer
Johannes Itten
Alexej von Jawlensky
Wassily Kandinsky
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Paul Klee
Oskar Kokoschka
Wilhelm Lehmbruck
El Lissitzky
Franz Marc
Jean Metzinger
Constantin von Mitschke-Collande
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Piet Mondrian
Otto Mueller
Emil Nolde
Max Pechstein
Christian Rohlfs
Oskar Schlemmer
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Kurt Schwitters

Answer the following questions about the artist you picked:

1. Brief description of the life of the artist (born, died, school, siblings, etc):
2. Why do you think the artists’ works were seen by the Nazis as “degenerate”?  Be specific.
3. Name and describe your favorite work by this artist:
4. What happened to this artist during and following World War II?
5. How did your artists respond to the rise of the Third Reich, the censorship of modern art, and to events of the war?