DEGENERATE ART: THE FATE OF THE AVANT-GARDE IN NAZI GERMANY
Stephanie Barron

Stephanie Barron: DEGENERATE ART: THE FATE OF THE AVANT-GARDE IN NAZI GERMANY. NYC: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Harry Abrams, 1991. Third printing. A fine softcover book in stiff, printed wrappers. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out of print.

9.75 x 12.25 softcover book with 424 pages and 750 illustration, including 164 in color and several fold-out illustrations. Includes bibliography, index, exhibition ephemera, and chronology. Oversized companion volume to the 1991 exhibition reconstructed by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in an attempt to recreate the 1937 Munich exhibition Entartete Kunst. This volume contains more than 150 masterworks from the original show, introductory essay and histories of the original show, discussion of museum resistance to the Nazi campaign, seizure and sale of original artwork, National Socialist views on modern art, etc. With biographical information on each artist, register of names and illustrations, facsimile of guide to 1937 exhibition, a room-by-room photographic survey of displays.

Contains biographical information on each artist, a register of names and institutions, an illustrated chronology, extensive documentation on the fate of the works in the 1937 exhibition and those that were sold at auction in Lucerne in 1939, and a facsimile of the rare guide to the 1937 exhibition, with a new English translation, including a room-by-room photographic survey. Foreword by Earl Powell, museum director; essays by Barron and George L. Mosse, Peter Guenther, Mario-Andreas von Luttichau, Christoph Zuschlag, Annegret Janda, Andrea Huneke, Michael Meyer, William Moritz, Dagmar Grunn, and Pamela Kort.

By the fall of 1937, the Nazis had removed 16,000 Avant-Garde works from German museums. 650 of these appeared in a touring 4-year exhibition called Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). Artists like Beckmann, Chagall, Dix, Grosz, Kandinsky, Klee, Kokoscha, Lahmbruck and founders of German Expressionism Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff were included. 150 surviving masterworks were included in a 1991 LACMA expedition from which this catalogue is derived. Essays in the book describe the original exhibition and its cultural and historical context during the Nazi era. A biography of Avant-Garde artists persecuted by the Nazis and the fate of works removed from German museums is detailed.

Keep telling yourself that it can't happen here.

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