Berlin Realism - From Käthe Kollwitz to Otto Dix
10 October 2019 – 26 January 2020

BERLIN REALISM

From Käthe Kollwitz to Otto Dix

Raw, abrasive and politically rebellious – Berlin art during the “Kaiserzeit” (the Wilhelminian era) was explosive. The artists of the Berlin Secession around 1900 were the first to thoroughly explore social issues. Kaiser Wilhelm II referred to their art as “gutter art”. They laid the foundations for a tradition of socially critical realism that was typical of the Berlin art scene and which saw its systematic and logical continuation in the art of the Weimar Republic.

This exhibition which covers the period between the 1890s and the 1930s gives a comprehensive overview with more than 120 works – ranging from oil paintings, drawings, prints and posters to photography and film.

The critical examination of social injustices in Germany runs like a common thread through the Berlin art scene. Independent of the various different styles in modernism, the themes of war, revolution, criticism of capitalism, social injustice and prostitution are explored again and again.

Painting and graphic art

Hans Baluschek, Heimkehr, 1899, Mischtechnik auf Karton © Bröhan-Museum, Berlin
Hans Baluschek, Heimkehr, 1899,
Mischtechnik auf Karton
© Bröhan-Museum, Berlin

The precarious living and working conditions of the working class in an increasingly industrialised society are at the centre of the works of Heinrich Zille, Käthe Kollwitz and Hans Baluschek. They illustrate a working-class environment characterised by poverty, starvation and social deprivation in the outwardly glamourous Wilhelminian era.

The First World War marked a drastic caesura. This cataclysmic disaster of the early 20th century confronted young painters and graphic artists such as Willy Jaeckel, Otto Dix and Georg Grosz with an existential situation that found its expression in their works of art. The artists of this ‘second generation’ of Berlin Realists – including Otto Nagel, Conrad Felixmüller and Werner Scholz – did not just espouse the cause of the ‘man in the street’, but criticised the social conditions in the Weimar Republic with an increasingly political intention. Artists such as John Heartfield published poignant photo-montages and collages using text and picture materials in the new media, e.g. the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung as a comment on political developments.

Film and photography

This show also includes the presentation of photographic positions. Works by August Sander and Friedrich Seidenstücker as well as photographs by Ernst Thormann and others demonstrate how this new working-class photography managed to document the living conditions of the lower social strata from their own perspective.

Two major examples of proletarian film making are shown in the framework programme – “Mutter Krausen’s Fahrt ins Glück”, a highlight of Weimar cinema made towards the end of the silent movie era, for which Käthe Kollwitz created an unusually large-scale poster, and “Kuhle Wampe or: Wem gehört die Welt?”, a textbook example of agit-prop and a classic of modern film making.

An exhibition in conjunction with the Bröhan-Museum, Berlin

Gallery

Heinrich Zille, Ringkampf in der Schaubude, 1903, schwarze Kreide und Aquarell © Privatsammlung Berlin
Hans Baluschek, Berliner Rummelplatz, 1914, Öl auf Leinwand © Bröhan-Museum, Berlin
Otto Dix, Schützengraben, um 1918, Gouache auf Papier, Privatbesitz Berlin © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
Arthur von Kampf, Wählt kommunistisch, 1918, Öl auf Leinwand © Berlinische Galerie – Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur, Foto: Kai-Annett Becker
Käthe Kollwitz, Revolution 1918, 1928, Kohle und schwarze Kreide © Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln
George Grosz, Schönheit, dich will ich preisen, Bl. 3 der Mappe ›Ecce homo‹, 1920, Karton, Offset, Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin © Estate of George Grosz, Princeton N.J. / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
George Grosz, Im Café, 1922, Aquarell, Feder, Tusche auf Papier, Galerie Brockstedt, Berlin © Estate of George Grosz, Princeton N.J. / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
Werner Scholz, Witwer, 1927, Öl auf Pappe © Nachlass Werner Scholz
Conrad Felixmüller, Zeitungsjunge, 1928, Öl auf Leinwand, Lindenau-Museum Altenburg © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
Bruno Voigt, Arbeitsamt I, 1929, Pastellkreide u. schwarze Tusche © Galerie Brockstedt, Berlin
Käthe Kollwitz, Mutter Krausen’s Fahrt ins Glück, 1929, Lithographie © Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln
Werner Scholz, Am Bülowbogen, um 1930, Farblithographie © Berlinische Galerie – Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur. Leihgabe aus Privatbesitz, Hamburg. Foto: Kai-Annett Becker
August Sander, Berliner Kohlenträger, 1928, Vintage Print, Galerie Berinson, Berlin © Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Köln; © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019
Cami und Sasha Stone, Berlin, Verkehr, Spittelmarkt, ca. 1929, Vintage Print © Galerie Berinson, Berlin
Ernst Thormann, Zeitungsjunge, 1929, Kontaktabzug © Ernst-Thormann-Archiv

Address

Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln

Neumarkt 18-24 / Neumarkt Passage

50667 Köln

+49 (0)221 227 2899

+49 (0)221 227 2602

Opening hours

Tue - Sun

11 am – 6 pm

Public holidays

11 am – 6 pm

First Thu each month

11 am – 8 pm

Mon

closed

Please note

The Käthe Kollwitz Museum's exhibition rooms are temporarily closed due to extensive renovation work.

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