Georg Scholz
(1890-1945)
Of Things to Come, 1922
Oil on board
Neue Galerie New York
This special exhibition at Neue Galerie New York debuts in conjunction with the centenary of Gustav F. Hartlaub’s 1925 groundbreaking survey of the same name held at the Kunsthalle Mannheim. The New Objectivity movement is considered one of the most significant artistic developments of the twentieth century. Hartlaub’s presentation showcased a new style of art that had emerged in the aftermath of World War I, characterized by its critical realism, social commentary, and detailed depiction of contemporary life, and marking a significant departure from Expressionism’s emotional intensity.
George Grosz, Eclipse of the Sun, 1926, oil on canvas. The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY. Museum Purchase © 2025 Estate of George Grosz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
The Neue Sachlichkeit movement was divided by two philosophies—the unflinching and socially critical Verists (represented by Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Georg Scholz, for example), and the Classicists (such as Alexander Kanoldt, Georg Schrimpf, and Christian Schad), who focused on harmony and beauty. The show will offer a wide-ranging perspective, exploring the tension between the Verists and the Classicists, which will be illustrated through a multidisciplinary installation, featuring paintings, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, works on paper, and film. The artists represented include Max Beckmann, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Otto Dix, Carl Grossberg, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, August Sander, Christian Schad, Oskar Schlemmer, and Georg Scholz, among others. The presentation interprets these two camps as a coherent chapter in art history, focusing on the ways that the New Objectivity proponents mirrored the Weimar Republic’s cultural, political, and social complexities.
“Neue Sachlichkeit / New Objectivity” is organized by Neue Galerie New York. This exhibition is curated by Dr. Olaf Peters, a professor of modern art at Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. At the Neue Galerie, Dr. Peters has previously organized “Max Beckmann: The Formative Years, 1915-1925,” “Otto Dix,” “Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937,” “Berlin Metropolis: 1918-1933,” and “Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930s.”
Also see:
"Degenerate" Art: The Trial of Modern Art under Nazism
From February 18 to May 25, 2025, the Musée national Picasso-Paris presents its new temporary exhibition: "Degenerate" Art: The Trial of Modern Art under Nazism". The first exhibition in France devoted to so-called "degenerate" art, it explores and puts into perspective the methodical attack of the Nazi regime against modern art and the place occupied by Pablo Picasso, the archetype of the "degenerate" artist in this history.
George Grosz, Metropolis, 1916-1917
"Degenerate" Art: The Trial of Modern Art under Nazism" examines in particular the propaganda exhibition "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art), organized in 1937 in Munich, showing more than 700 works by a hundred artists, representatives of the different currents of modern art, from Otto Dix to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, from Vassily Kandinsky to Emil Nolde, from Paul Klee to Max Beckmann, in a staging designed to provoke disgust in the visitor.
The culmination of a series of infamous exhibitions set up in several museums from 1933 (Dresden, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, etc.) to denounce the artistic avant-gardes as a threat to German "purity", "Entartete Kunst" is part of a methodical "purge" of German collections. More than 20,000 works, including those of Vincent Van Gogh, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso, designated as a "degenerate" artist from the 1920s in both France and Germany, were thus removed, sold or destroyed. At the heart of this story, the term "degeneration", emerging during the 19th century in different disciplines (natural history, medicine, anthropology, art history, etc.) until its crystallization at the heart of the National Socialist "world view", serves as a vector for the deployment of racist and anti-Semitic theories within the history of art.
