Castaway Modernism

Basel’s Acquisitions of “Degenerate” Art

Eva Reifert, Claudia Blank, Gregory Desauvage , Uwe Fleckner

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Hardback

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English

Hatje Cantz
10 February 2023

Forgery, falsification & theft of artworks; Art & design styles: Modernist design & Bauhaus; Exhibition catalogues & specific collections

Summary
Details

Torn Modernism illuminates an important moment in the history of the Kunstmuseum Basel's collection. In 1937 the Nazi cultural policy denounced thousands of works as ""degenerate"" and forcibly removed from German museums. The Third Reich's Ministry of Propaganda correctly assumed that a portion of such works would find buyers abroad, in this way certain artworks deemed ""internationally exploitable"" reached the art market via various channels. Georg Schmidt (1896-1966), the museum's director at the time, managed in 1939 to acquire the Painting Animal Destinies by Franz Marc (1880-1916) and twenty avant-garde masterpieces all at once.

In the catalogue, renowned experts trace the events based on the seizures in German museums and explain the historical contexts. The actors of the institutions and the art market are presented, and the Nazi regime's act of cultural violence is revealed, which resulted in an artificial fragmentation of Modernism into art that was ""exploitable"" on the one hand, and art that had been destroyed or forgotten on the other. Contributions on the auction of the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne, on Georg Schmidt's approach, and on the classification of the acquisitions in the context of Basel's collection history bring specific Swiss aspects into focus.

Text by: Claudia Blank, Gregory Desauvage, Uwe Fleckner, Meike Hoffmann
Edited by: Eva Reifert
Imprint: Hatje Cantz
Country of Publication: Germany
Dimensions: Height: 280mm, Width: 220mm,
Weight: 1.480kg
ISBN: 9783775752220
ISBN 10: 3775752226
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 10 February 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active