Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

The German Expressionists exhibition, featuring 15 artists and 42 oil paintings, watercolours and drawings, became a strong counter-reaction to the infamous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition, which took place in Munich from July 19 to November 30, 1937 and subsequently in other German and Austrian cities. The ideological goal of Degenerate Art was to show the artistic avant-garde in a negative light, as Hitler and other Nazi leaders saw it as the ruin of German art.

The gallery owner Hugo Feigl specialized in modern art in his gallery practice and had many personal and business contacts in Germany. Soon after Hitler came to power, his brother, Bedřich Feigl, moved from Berlin to Prague to escape the discrimination against Jewish citizens. It is therefore not surprising that Hugo Feigl wanted to support artists who suddenly found themselves on the list of undesirable artists and were forbidden to work or exhibit in Germany.

The catalogue and a number of reviews mention that the exhibited paintings came from the property of a collector in Dresden who remained unnamed in all of the texts. This was a sales exhibition, but the catalogue did not list the prices – potential buyers could ask in the gallery. Some of the newspaper articles suggest that the prices were quite steep. It is possible that Feigl wanted to support the exhibiting artists by setting the prices high.

Although the choice of artworks and the show's conception was determined by the fact that this was a sale loan from a private collector, some reviewers praised the selection while others remained somewhat reserved: “The exhibition generally does not offer pieces bearing the same impact and typicality but as a whole, it is characteristic enough” [Kovárna 1937].

Most of the reviewers approached the term “entartete Kunst” critically, translating it as “zvrhlé ” (perverse), “zrůdné” (monstrous) and  “zavržené” (condemned), or using the German original. Almost all of them wrote it in quotation marks, and most articles betray the author's strong aversion to it. Others, such as the art historian Jaromír Pečírka, who mostly contributed to German periodicals in this period, consistently avoided using it. Many of the texts simultaneously expressed opposition to the cultural politics of Nazi Germany.  A-zet, for example, wrote: “The whole world is aware of the anti-culture gesture made by Hitler and the Reich's cultural ideologues with the exhibition of 'rejected' art" [K. 1937]. České slovo wrote that “artists who, since the war, had represented German thinking and feeling through visible shapes both at home and abroad, were now anathema to their countrymen” [Š. 1937]. Also importantly, a number of reviewers commented on the organizer's decision to exhibit works only by so-called Aryan artists, an arrangement that precluded all supporters of antisemitic views from using race as an argument.

Most of the more extensive reviews devoted considerable attention to characterizing German Expressionism and German art in general. In this period, art history and criticism remained largely in the grip of national categories, with authors attempting to define artistic creation as a result of “national temperament.” Most critics looked for the roots of German art in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, referring to the printmaker Albrecht Dürer, the painter Matthias Grünewald and, later, the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich as the key models for artists. Právo lidu defines German art as following: “Heavy-handedness, stubbornness, an almost barbaric obliteration of outward charm characterized German art even when it followed the ancient beauty discovered by the Renaissance” [jk. 1937]. Most reviewers agreed that “German Expressionism can be considered a typical manifestation of the German spirit” [Anonymous author 1937]. Jaroslav Pecháček wrote that German Expressionism was characterized by “brutal naturalism in themes,” regarding it, like other reviewers, as a product of “postwar psychosis of the defeated and broken nation” [Pecháček 1937]. Other critics emphasized the prophetic power of art that “heralded the arrival of barbarism and tyranny” [jk. 1937].

Some authors declared their insistence that, although not entirely enthusiastic about German Expressionism themselves, “culture is not made by cuts and political decrees” [Kovárna 1937), and they demanded artistic and political freedom. These critics simultaneously felt the need to react to the emerging Nazi art which, not unlike the Russian regime at the time, promoted “mere naturalist-classicizing stereotypes with an obvious tendency to embellish and please” [Anonymous author 1937].

Due to the number of represented artists, stylistic evaluations usually focused on their individual artistic expressions. Yet, one of the reviewers noted that “they are not all Expressionists; there are Cubists and Poetists” [Kr. 1937]. The critics often emphasized that Lovis Corinth, with whom the exhibition began, represented German Impressionism, while Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee were abstract painters, and Käthe Kollwitz focused on social themes. The variety of artistic concepts thus corresponded to the idea of Expressionism as a "highly personal art” [Pečírka 1937]. The reviewers' personal tastes and specializations were reflected in the way they judged the individual artists and their works. For instance, some criticized the works by Otto Dix while others, such as Jaroslav Pecháček, praised Dix's three watercolours, considering them the strongest works at the exhibition. Emil Nolde's paintings received similarly mixed reviews.

In general, we may say the exhibition enjoyed great attention from the press. Some newspapers even published reproductions of exhibited artworks (Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix, Erich Heckel, Carl Hofer and Oskar Kokoschka). Both German and Czech-speaking reviewers perceived the show in a similar way. On both sides, there were positive and neutral reviews, most commonly the latter, and texts condemning the exhibition, mostly because their authors misunderstood modern art. None of the periodicals, German or Czech, published any article that would explicitly support Nazi ideology, in contrast with the reaction of the German press to the Entartete Kunst show. Compared to this extraordinarily shameful event, the Prague exhibition of German Expressionists was relatively small, but it allowed local art enthusiasts to form their own opinions about the so-called “degenerate art” and possibly buy paintings to support artists who found themselves on the “undesirable” list.

Eva Janáčová

Works Cited

Anonymous author 1937: Anonymous author, Feiglova galerie v Praze, Volné směry XXXIV, 1937, p. 140

K. 1937: K., V galerii Dr. Feigla německé zavržené umění, A-zet IX, 1937, 16. 10., Archive of the  National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

jk. 1937: jk., Němečtí expresionisté, Právo lidu XLVI, 1937, 13. 10., Archive of the  National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

Kovárna 1937: Fr.[antišek] Kovárna, Němečtí expresionisté, Pražské noviny CCLVIII, 1937, 14. 10., Archive of the National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

Kr. 1937: Kr., Němečtí vyděděnci, Nedělní list XI, 1937, 3. 10., 2. vydání, Archive of the National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

Pečírka 1937: J.[aromír] Pečírka, Deutsche Expressionisten, Prager Presse XVII, 1937, 6. 10, 2. vydání, Archive of the  National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

Pecháček 1937: Jaroslav Pecháček, „Zvrhlé“ umění v Praze, Masarykův lid XII, 1937, 5. 10., Archive of the  National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

Š. 1937: Š., Otázka německého umění, České slovo XXXI, 1937, 17. 10., 2. vydání, Archive of the National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

Archival Sources

Archive of the National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

Anonym, Feiglova galerie v Praze, Volné směry XXXIV, 1937, p. 140

a. st., Deutsche Expressionisten, Bohemia CX, 1937, 2. 10., Archive of the National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

Efpen., Soubor 42 maleb a kreseb německých expresionistů, Samostatnost XXXII, 1937, 21. 10., Archive of the National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12

K., V Praze v Galerii Dr. Feigla, Rozvoj XLIV, 1937, 22. 10., Archive of the National Gallery Prague, Moderní galerie, 1901–1942, Výstřižkové knihy – Praha 1937, book no. 12