Art in the Time of Terror · Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Ernst Wilhelm Nay - Woman head resting on a hand - 1944Hannah Hoch - 1945 The End
From 4 March to 6 June 2022, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents "Art For No One", an exhibition focusing on the artists who remained in Germany between 1933 and 1945, under the control of the National Socialist regime.
Images: Ernst Wilhelm Nay, "Woman's head resting on a hand", 1944, Gouache on paper, 15.4 x 23.7 cm, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum & Papiermuseum Düren, © Photograph: Peter Hinschläger. Fotografie Ernst Wilhelm Nay Stiftung / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021 ·· Hannah Höch, "1945 (The End)", 1945, oil on canvas, 92,8x81,4 cm, Berliner Sparkasse © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021
In the years leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War, the growing climate of fear led an increasing number of artists to leave Europe and seek refuge in calmer lands. The situation was particularly threatening for German artists, who were forced to live under the National Socialist regime, which caused a good number of them -Max Beckmann and George Grosz, for example- to leave Germany and end up spending the last part of their careers in the United States.
Despite this mass exile, not a few artists remained in Germany, and -showing no affiliation with or sympathy for the National Socialist regime- suffered to a greater or lesser extent from the reprisals. The exhibition at the Schirn includes some 150 works (paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs) by 14 different artists. Among them, perhaps the most notable case is Otto Dix (1891-1969), who had already suffered first-hand from the effects of World War I ("the work of the devil!" as he wrote in his war diary), and whose two great masterpieces -The Trench and War Cripples- were included by the Nazi regime in the exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) and subsequently destroyed.
Other artists included in the exhibition (which, according to the Schirn Kunsthalle in a press release, does not follow a uniform stylistic development, but focuses on the contradictory nature of this period) are Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Hannah Höch, Willi Baumeister, Hans Grundig, Lea Grundig, Werner Heldt, Marta Hoepffner, Karl Hofer, Edmund Kesting, Hans Uhlmann, Fritz Winter, Jeanne Mammen and Franz Radziwill.

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