New Objectivity
Description
The New Objectivity (in German: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, who used it as the title of an art exhibition staged in 1925 to showcase artists who were working in a post-expressionist spirit. As these artists - who included Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Adolf Dietrich, George Grosz, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz and Jeanne Mammen - rejected the self-involvement and romantic longings of the expressionists, Weimar intellectuals in general made a call to arms for public collaboration, engagement, and rejection of romantic idealism. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Otto Dix
Leading Verist master of Neue Sachlichkeit who exposed the physical trauma of World War I veterans, wartime trenches, and Weimar social decadence with searing, unsentimental precision.
George Grosz
Savage satirist and central figure of the Verist wing whose razor-sharp caricatures and oil paintings indicted corrupt capitalists, war profiteers, and militarists in post-war Germany.
Max Beckmann
Monumental painter who associated with New Objectivity while maintaining unique symbolic depth, documenting the claustrophobia, violence, and moral crisis of Weimar society.
Christian Schad
Renowned portraitist of New Objectivity whose smooth, surgical, razor-sharp oil portraits captured the cold dispassion, eroticism, and alienation of bohemian Berlin society.
August Sander
Master photographer of Neue Sachlichkeit whose monumental documentary project 'People of the 20th Century' cataloged German citizens across all professions and social classes with objective clarity.
Jeanne Mammen
Prominent female realist painter and illustrator who documented the independent 'New Women', lesbian bars, cabarets, and street life of 1920s Berlin with sympathetic, matter-of-fact observation.
Famous Artworks
Fun Facts
The term 'New Objectivity' (Neue Sachlichkeit) was coined by art historian and curator Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub in 1923 as the title for a landmark 1925 exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, which brought together post-expressionist artists seeking a matter-of-fact return to tangible reality.
↗ Source: tate.org.uk
When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party seized power in Germany in 1933, the New Objectivity movement was violently crushed; Otto Dix was dismissed from his professorship in Dresden, George Grosz fled to America right before stormtroopers raided his apartment, and hundreds of their artworks were seized and branded as 'Degenerate Art' (Entartete Kunst).
↗ Source: moma.org