Art in Weimar Germany - Beatrice Moss: 3D Gallery

The Blue Riders

The Blue Riders were a group from the 20s whos work explored the relationship between art, music, colour and spiritualism. The members were Paul Klee, August Macke, Marione von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky. Theu believed in more spiriyual alternatives, hence why their group name and symbol was a blue horse, representing creative energy.

George Grosz

In drawing collections such as The Face of the Ruling Class (1921) and Ecce Homo (1922), Grosz depicts fat Junkers, greedy capitalists, smug bourgeoisie and drinkers, as well as hollow-faced and ill looking factory labourers, the poor, and the unemployed.

Otto Dix

Otto Dix occupied a lead position in the New Objectivity movement, turning away from the ideas of Romanticism and Expressionism toward a more acidic and non-sentimental perspective to reflect the harsh realities of the interwar German society. He wanted to show the world how it really was, not what people wanted to see it as.

New Objectivity

emerged as a style in Germany in the 1920s as a challenge to Expressionism. As its name suggests, it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism. It didn't try to hide or romanticise anything, it just showed it how it was, or the more cinical, pessimistic and realistic version. The person most associated with the movement is Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Pabst's films of the 1920s concentrate on social issues such as abortion, prostitution, labor disputes, homosexuality, and addiction.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was a swiss born artist who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory, writing about it extensively his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory. He used the technique of reverse glass painting, which few other artists of his time did. His famous quote was "a line is a dot that went for a walk. Art does not reproduce what we see, rather, it makes us see." This suggests his attempts to change how people saw the world. He was also one of the leaders memebrs of the group called 'The Blue Riders'.

The Bauhaus Movement

The Bauhaus movement originted from the Bauhaus Design College in Berlin. It it a geometric, abstract style featuring little sentiment or emotion and no historical nods, and its aesthetic continues to influence architects, designers and artists. It was at first led by the architect Walter Gropius in 1919. The term 'Bauhaus' means construction house, originally referring to the school of design where it was born. Some of the principles of Bauhaus are that there is no border between artist and craftsman, form follows function, minimalism, an emphasis on technology and constant development.

New Styles and Techniques

Ideas about art evolved and views such as Modernism and Expressionism came forward. While their art is recognizable as a bitter, cynical criticism of life in Weimar Germany, they were striving to portray a sense of realism that they saw missing from expressionist works. One of the big changes in art was to paint and sculpt subjects realistically. This is called realism and involves a number of techniques that make the subjects and background look like they would in real life. This also meant giving the subjects more emotional qualities. Overall, it was modernism, expressionism and New Objectivity that were big changes in art in Weimar Germany.

Social Criticism

A large part of Weimar art was the social criticism. Artists wanted to show their audiences how they veiwee the world, how bad it was and society's true colours hidden under everyhting else. These atrworks often portray stupid politicians and people of power by them having no heads, or, in work work there was a dog on the table, perhaps showing how even a dog would be more intelligent than these superficials. Social criticism was all about showing people how awful their world really was.

How Bad the War Was

A lot of Weimar art was to show how awful the war was and how it should never happen again. tjis particular piece shows many dead bodies and everything is torn up and destroyed or ghas bullet holes in it. The painting has very dull tones, few colours. This could be to show how sad and depressing the war was and how it sucked the life out of everyone who was in it, leaving behind these bloody remains and bodies.

Depression

There was also a lot of art that showing how everyone was sad and depressed. This painting depicts normals civilisans having the life and joy sucked out of them, hence the starnge, dragginess of the picture and how it's in black and white.

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Art in Weimar Germany - Beatrice Moss