1933
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Abstract-'ism' 1931-1936: form is set free.
Social Realism:1930s-
Bauhaus: closed by the Nazis in 1933, declared Entarte Kunst, home to Expressionism: founded by Gropius,Klee and Feininger worked out of the school, many expatriated to US for freedom of the Arts.
1933: Otto Dix, fired from Dresden Academy, for anti-military paintings and for the perceived threat to a potential war effort in lessening morale of the Germans "to defend themselves".
Painting: The Seven Deadly Sins; Dix is one of the Entarte Kunst Artists.
1933 Reflections of Decadence Art Display: Otto Dix and others were exhibited as degenerate art in Dresden Town Hall.
Klee goes to Switzlerland, learns he has Scleroderma of which he will die in 40. Dismissed by Nazis from teaching positions
and part of closed Bauhaus. Had a mystic concept of art, and like Klindinsky, integrated artforms of expressionism and music.
Paul Schultzenaumburg replaces Grobius as head of Bauhaus. P.schultzenaumburg is reknown for his work Kunst und Rasse (Art & Race)
in which he takes modern art, shows its distortions and paralleled it with the race of the Artists, mostly Jewish.
1934
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1934: Otto Dix: Painting: The Triumph of Death: Nazi imagery.
1935
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1935 Mother & Eva, Painting: Otto Dix
Dix responds to his work being included in a Degenerate Art Display (1933) by painting "Flanders" a brutal anti-war statement
1936
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1936: Van Horen begins to draw for LeSoir, will later document camp life at Esterwegen & Flossenberg.
1936:During the Berlin Olympics, German Museums such as The KunstHalle Mannheim Museum housing modern art, open doors to foreign visitors.
1936: Goebbels appoints Adolf Zeigler President of the Reichkunstkammer, or Reich Arts Chamber. Zeigler
is a professor at U of Munich and outspoken critic of Jewish Art. He immediately bars over 100 artists (only a portion are Jewish,
including Chagall) and declares all art 'unfit' which insults German sensibilities or betrays 'form'.1937
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Allianz: 1937-1950s
1937: "Entarte Kunst" Exhibit: Massive Exhibit of Art, Sculpture and Form which the Nazis considered "Degenerate Art"
Works included those of Chagall, Dix, Klee, Baumeister, and the Bauhaus.
Goebbels issues a 5 point 'indictment' of what is considered degenerate in art. Criteria includes:
any Bolshevik Art, Marxist theme Art, Box-like Buildings, un-German Art and non-approved Art, included
expressionism, abstractism and most non-traditional or experimental art forms.
July 18, 1937: House of German Art: Berlin: Exhibits what is expected of German Art under the Nazi's Reign.
1937: Max Beckmann, called "the German Picasso" flees Berlin for New York when his Art is declared degenerate.
1938
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Schlichter, a graphics artist reknown for anti-war, anti-military themes is imprisoned for three months by the Nazis. A friend of Brecht.
1939
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Art & freedom School 1939
Dix arrested on suspicion of attempt to kill Hitler, later released. Forced to join German Domestic 'Guard'.
1939: Berlin: 5000-16,000 pieces of confiscated "Degenerate Art" confiscated from Museums and Exhibit Halls are
summarily burned as ordered by Hitler and Goebbels.
From the "Trail of Paint":
"In June 30, 1939, 125 paintings and sculptures representing art purged and pillaged from German museums and galleries were sent to the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne, Switzerland, to be sold for foreign currency in an international market that placed a high value on non-German paintings. Theodore Fischer was selected as the dealer, as he was not Jewish and was connected to the international art market. Among the work represented was VanGogh 's Self-Portrait, (which is now in the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard), Paul Gaughin's From Tahititi, (now at the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Liege), and four paintings by Picasso, Head of a Woman, Two Harlequins, Absinthe drinker (in various private collections), and Family Portrait (in the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Liege). Paintings by Nolde, Chagall, Matisse, Marc, Kokoschka, Kirchner, Dix, Klee, Beckmann, and Modigliani were purchased at a fraction of their true worth. The auction was boycotted by major museums and Jewish supporters because of the public outcry surrounding the obtaining of the works and the distribution of the funds.
"
1940
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Paul Klee dies June 29,1940 of Muscular disease, which affected style of his painting in later years. Later paintings
reflect the Angst of war.
1941
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As Germans move into Soviet territory, they ransack 1200museums, 500 synagogues, and many palaces: Germans
declare Soviet art as "trash" and even worse than Jewish Art.
1942
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Roman Kramsztyk (1885-1942), artist in the Warsaw Ghetto dies.
Bruno Schulz (1892-1942 Drohobycz Ghetto Artist, killed by Nazis, 1942. Graphics
Gela Seksztajn (1907-1942): Warsaw Ghetto Painter, dies at hands of the Nazis: Treblinka, 1942.
1943
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February 24,1943 Fernand Von Horen: Artist, arrested, interred in Esterwegen & Flossenberg as a Nacht und Nebel Prisoner.
"Yitzhok Brauner (1887-1944) Self-Portrait.
Brauner was a painter in the Lódz ghetto in 1943."
1944
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June 1944 visit of Red Cross to Terezin promotes false idea that Hitler is actually promoting the arts and culture of the Jews: a
propaganda move to the outside world.
1945
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Abstract Expressionism:1945
Otto Dix after serving in army, becomes P.O.W. Later (1946) paints Job, and Masks, and in '48 Ecce Homo II, detailing suffering and
atrocities of WWII.