degenerate art

degenerate art, term used by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe art that did not support the ideals of Nazism. It was also the title of a propagandistically designed Nazi exhibition of modern art held in Munich in 1937.

With Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the systematic suppression of contemporary art quickly spread throughout Germany. Sanctions were created to forbid the exhibition and even the creation of any contemporary art not approved by the Nazi Party; such work was labeled, along with the artists who created it, as “degenerate.” In 1933 this art began to be displayed in defamatory exhibits intended to disparage modern art, and to link the Jewish race with the decline of German art.

The culmination of these exhibits was “Entartete Kunst,” which opened in Munich in July 1937 and was advertised as “culture documents of the decadent work of Bolsheviks and Jews.” The works on exhibit included only a small segment of the almost 16,000 works of modern art confiscated from German museums on the orders of Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda. So-called degenerate works by Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and other major artists of the 20th century were displayed with paintings by psychotic patients and were subjected to vicious ridicule by the press and the German people, who attended in vast numbers. This exhibit was designed to contrast with a simultaneous exhibition of art approved by Nazi leaders made up of works executed in an academic style and dealing with typical Nazi themes of heroism and duty. After showing in Munich, “Entartete Kunst” toured to other German cities. In 1939 many of the confiscated works were auctioned in Lucerne, Switzerland, or sold abroad to finance the Nazi Party; the rest are believed to have been burned in Berlin.