Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
After the Nazi takeover many artists left the country and others ended up in prison or con-
centration camps, their works confiscated or destroyed. The art promoted instead was often
terrible, favouring straightforward 'Aryan' forms and epic styles. Propaganda artist Mjölnir
defined the typical look of the time with block Gothic scripts and idealised figures.
Berlin Dada
Dada was an avant-garde art movement formed in Zurich in 1916 in reaction to the horrors
of WWI. It spread to Berlin in 1918 with the help of Richard Huelsenbeck, who held the
first Dada event in a gallery in February that year and later produced the
First German
Dada Manifesto
. Founding members included George Grosz, photomontage inventor John
Heartfield and Hannah Höch, but Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters and Hans Arp were
also among the many others who dabbled in Dada.
Uncompromisingly turning away from convention, Dada took an irrational, satirical and
often absurdist approach that found expression not only in the visual arts but also in theatre,
dance and literature. Dadaists embraced collage and montage and considered chance and
spontaneity integral parts of the artistic process. In Berlin especially, there was often a polit-
ical undercurrent and a tendency to shock and provoke. The First International Dada Fair in
1920, for instance, took place beneath a suspended German officer dummy with a pig's
head.
Post WWII
After WWII, Berlin's art scene was as fragmented as the city itself. In the east, artists were
forced to toe the 'socialist-realist' line, at least until the late 1960s when artists of the so-
called Berliner Schule, including Manfred Böttcher and Harald Metzkes, sought to embrace
a more interpretative and emotional form of expression inspired by the colours and aesthetic
of Beckmann, Matisse, Picasso and other classical modernists. In the '70s, when conflicts of
the individual in society became a prominent theme, underground galleries flourished in
Prenzlauer Berg and art became a collective endeavour.
In postwar West Berlin, artists eagerly embraced abstract art. Pioneers included Zone 5,
which revolved around Hans Thiemann, and surrealists Heinz Trökes and Mac Zimmer-
mann. In the 1960s politics was a primary concern and a new style called 'critical realism'
emerged, propagated by artists like Ulrich Baehr, Hans-Jürgen Diehl and Wolfgang Petrick.
The 1973 movement Schule der Neuen Prächtigkeit (School of New Magnificence) had a
similar approach. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, expressionism found its way back onto
the canvasses of Salomé, Helmut Middendorf and Rainer Fetting, a group known as the
