Degenerate Art. The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany

Looks at the reconstructed exhibit of degenerate art censored by the Nazis in 1937 When the National Socialists came to power in Germany in the early 1930s, one of their most vigorous campaigns was against modernist and avant-garde art. Some 650 works by such renowned artists as Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee were removed from German museums and assembled in a traveling exhibition that the Nazis called «Degenerate Art.» Fifty years later, the L.A. County Museum of Art reconstructed the notorious exhibition. This catalogue not only recreates the original show, but contains exhaustively researched essays on such topics as the Nazi ideals of beauty and resistance efforts by some German museums.