One of the biggest concerns of the Nazism was the dissemination of their aesthetic conceptions of art, linked to their ideological and political conceptions, using the art as a propaganda weapon of their ideals.
They based their productions on interpretations of Darwinian evolutionism and theories about eugenics, seeking to present natural perfection through the elimination of impure and pernicious bodies that were not in keeping with the pursuit of the pure German race, a strong race superior to the too much.
One of the premises of Nazi art was the restoration of naturalism, but idealized according to Aryan superiority conceptions. The aim would be to escape from complicated abstractions and concentrate on the expression of a world that would reign in the future, a beautiful, idyllic, classic and virtuous world, as the strong German nation would be after its victory over the rest peoples.
The themes chosen by the Nazi regime to be artistically expressed should be in accordance with the National Socialist conception of art. As Hitler wrote in 1935: “While we are sure to correctly express in politics the spirit and the source of life of our people, we also believe that we are able to recognize its natural equivalent and carry it out" (
Adventures in History, Issue 47, July 2007, p. 36). With this in mind, the Nazis organized, in 1937, the exhibition of Great German Art, in the newly created House of German Art.In addition to the conception and production of a Nazi art, the Hitler regime started to pursue what considered a degenerate art, linked to modern avant-garde movements, which then spread through the Europe. Various artists were persecuted in Germany, such as the painters Otto Dix, Emil Nolde and Erich Heckel. Others were removed from their posts at the head of cultural institutions, and thousands of works of art were destroyed. The Bauhaus, the main center for the dissemination of the avant-garde in the visual arts and architecture, was closed.
Even before his coming to power, Hitler had defined modern artistic production in his book Mein Kampf (Minha Luta, 1923), and at the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, in 1933, he repeated the definition: “If every thing to which giving birth was the result of an inner experience, so they are a public danger and must be under supervision. doctor. [...] If it was pure speculation, then they must have been in an institution suitable for deception and fraud”.
The practical result of this perspective of persecution of modernism came with the holding of the exhibition Kunst entartete- in Portuguese, Degenerated Art. Held in Munich in 1937, the objective of the exhibition was to defend modern art, presenting the works confiscated throughout Germany in a cluttered, alternating works by renowned artists with pictures of the mentally ill, presenting them with moralizing political commentary and titles changed.
Alongside works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, among others, the Nazi painter and politician Adolf Ziegler he defined the exhibited works as follows: “Around us is seen the monstrous fruit of insanity, imprudence, ineptitude and completeness degeneration. What this exhibition offers inspires horror and aversion in all of us” (Adventures in History, Issue 47, July 2007, p. 32). The works selected by the Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels were seen by more than 2 million people, and represented another from the battles carried out by the Nazis, now in the field of art, for the imposition of their conceptions of biological and social superiority.
Image credits: nephthali and Shutterstock.com
By Tales Pinto
Graduated in History
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/a-arte-nazista-combate-ao-modernismo.htm