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degenerate art

File:Ausstellung_entartete_kunst_1937.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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degenerate art

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term used by the German Nazi regime to describe modern art

Described at

Link to a page describing this subject · not written by Vinony

Wikidata facts

Instance of
art movement
Subclass of
art
Country
Germany
Image
Entartete "KUNST" Ausstellungsführer 30 Pfg. Degenerate art Exhibition catalogue front cover 1937 Nazi Germany Propaganda Otto Freundlich Der neue Mensch (L'Homme nouveau) 1912 No known copyright restrictions 17-20 (3).jpg
Said to be same as
modern art
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Sources (1)

via Wikidata · CC0

~32 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Joseph Goebbels views the Degenerate Art Exhibition. Degenerate art (German: Entartete Kunst) was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, was removed from state-owned museums and banned in Nazi Germany on the grounds that such art was an "insult to German feeling", un-German, Freemasonic, Jewish, or Communist in nature. Those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions that included dismissal from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art.

Degenerate Art also was the title of a 1937 exhibition held by the Nazis in Munich, consisting of 650 modernist artworks that the Nazis had taken from museums, that were poorly hung alongside graffiti and text labels mocking the art and the artists. Designed to inflame public opinion against modernism, the exhibition subsequently traveled to several other cities in Germany and Austria.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “degenerate art” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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