In a rare exhibition,Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof museum is exploring the dark side of Germany’s art history – and revealing why works from the Nazi era should not be hidden awayGerman artist Rudolf Belling’s 1924 sculpture Dreiklang (Triad) is a ragged twist of interlocking prongs made from lustrous birchwood. Inescapably contemporary, it is a pioneering example of abstract sculpture, or was Belling’s first genuine success. Its split structure might symbolise the schools of portray,sculpture and architecture that Belling sought to unify – or foreshadow his work’s disjointed reception in the tumultuous decades that followed its creation.
In 1937 Dreiklang was one of more than 650 artworks exhibited in Munich’s infamous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition at the former Institute of Archaeology in the city centre’s Hofgarten. Conceived by Reich propagandist Joseph Goebbels and authorised by Adolf Hitler, the show took aim at contemporary work that was deemed “decadent” or “racially impure” by the National Socialist party – but its presence underlined the confusion and complexity surrounding the Nazis’ cultural approach. absent from the Hofgarten, and Belling’s more traditional sculpture of the German boxer Max Schmeling was simultaneously shown in the state-sanctioned Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung (much German Art Exhibition) in Munich’s Haus der Deutschen Kunst,the House of German Art. When the authorities realised the coincidence, Belling’s “degenerate art” pieces were quietly removed.
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Source: theguardian.com