Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London

"In this exciting and carefully researched book, Keith Holz shows how modern German art continued to evolve outside the borders of the Third Reich during the 1930s and 1940s. An array of important and politically engaged artists---including Oskar Kokoschka, John Heartfield, Otto Freundlich, Josef Breitenbach, and Max Ernst---made major contributions to modern art and helped educate foreign audiences about Nazi Germany. This is the definitive study of the exiled artists' associations in Paris, Prague, and London, and their important discourse about contemporary art." --Jonathan Petropoulos, author of The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany From 1933 to 1940, as the National Socialists assumed control of Germany and its art world, scores of dissenting artists and critics fled the Reich. Though the United States was often thought to be the haven of choice for these exiles, the greatest concentration of artists and critics first relocated to the nearby, democratic capitals of Paris, Prague, and London. Through press and archival research, Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London examines the public activities of the four exile artists' groups and demonstrates the obstacles and competition each met trying to educate local and international audiences about recent German art. The story situates the artistic and critical endeavors of the exiles amid the turbulent international political events that led to World War II. Unlike most accounts that assume that the avant-garde and bourgeois exhibition societies of Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic were both extinguished at the hands of the Nazis in 1933, this study shows that artists exiled from Germany continued these traditions in exile for several years. Eventually, the treacherous politics of appeasement created repressive conditions for German exiles and the public promotion of their art. This new work presents a compelling case that the critical art and voices of leftist German artists in exile were displaced by local galleries and critics promoting modernist conceptions of twentieth-century German art. Keith Holz sets his work apart by paying close attention to how political events and politically influenced conditions of publicity affected the cultural and discursive contexts of modern German art's promotion and reception. Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London will be of interest to scholars interested in the history of art, cultural historians and theorists, along with Germanists and historians dedicated to the study of interwar Europe, the Third Reich, and exiled populations.