Finding 74: "Entartete Kunst" Exhibition Catalogue

June 5, 2012

The exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) opened in Munich on July 19, 1937. Organized by Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich Minister of Propaganda, the exhibition was designed to demonstrate to the German public examples of modernist and avant-garde works that were unacceptable under the Third Reich for reasons of foreignness and cultural degeneracy. Tactics that were employed included stripping paintings from their frames, adding graphic commentary, and highlighting the prices of the works to raise public ire. First in Munich and then as a traveling exhibition, Entartete Kunst was attended by more than two million visitors, with Guggenheim director Hilla Rebay among them. She wrote to the artist Rudolf Bauer in August 1937 to report that she had visited the exhibition, where she saw works by many of the artists she would soon support through exhibitions at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (forerunner of the Guggenheim Museum). These included works by Vasily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Bauer, among others.

—Rachel Chatalbash, Archivist