of Munich) were arrested, including the painters, Georg Schrimpf and Hans Richter, as well as the writer, Oskar Maria Graf.
In Berlin, as in Munich, also centre of the Revolution that was soon to fail, 120 artists met together at the end of 1918. They called themselves the Novembergruppe. The leaders of the group were among others César Klein, Max Pechstein, Moritz Melzer, and Georg Tappert. In their circular letter they wrote: ‘The future of art and the seriousness of the present situation force us of revolutionary spirit (Cubists, Futurists, Expressionists) into agreement and close alliance.’ Among the participants of the meetings and exhibitions were such renowned artists as Rudolf Bauer, the sculptor Rudolf Belling, Otto Freundlich, Richard Janthur and the architect, Erich Mendelsohn. Artists of the most varied artistic and ideological viewpoints joined. For example, from the Sturm, Walter Dexel, Oskar Fischer, Johannes Molzahn, Otto Möller, and Fritz Stuckenberg joined. Enrico Prampolini represented the Futurists in the Novembergruppe. The Dadaists Hans Arp, George Grosz, Hannah Höch, and Raoul Hausmann sympathised with the Novembergruppe. Kurt Schwitters exhibited jointly with them. Even artists who taught from 1919 onwards at the Bauhaus in Weimar are mentioned as participants during the time the Novembergruppe existed. These were Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy.
Towards the end of 1918, a whole row of artist groups had arisen: in Dresden, the Gruppe 1919; in Hamburg, the Hallische Künstlergrupe (Halle Artist Group) and the group Kräfte (Powers); in Magdeburg the Vereinigung für neue Kunst und Literatur (Association for New Art and Literature) and Die Kugel (The Sphere); in Düsseldorf, Das Junge Rheinland (the Young Rhineland); and in Karlsruhe, the Gruppe Rih (Rih Group). The art scene was a living mixture of artistic styles belonging to the object-oriented and abstract Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism.
In the April 1920 issue of Der Ararat, Leopold Zahn drew attention to the fact that the Futurist Carlo Carrà was competing with Poussin for the sternest composition in their painting. In addition, Giorgio de Chirico was proudly declaring: ‘pictor classicus sum.’ The influence of the new Pittura Metafisica was great among the German artists. As has already been mentioned, Max Ernst created his series Fiat Modes; George Grosz painted his machine people set in an architectural wasteland around 1920 in the Diabolospieler. Even Georg Schrimpf, Gottfried Brockmann, Oskar Schlemmer, and many others could not deny this influence. Even Alexander Kanoldt, who worked in seclusion had, by 1914, already arrived at a similar style. Heinrich Maria Davringhausen had done so in 1917; George Schrimpf in 1918 – all three done so independently of one another. In Pittura Metafisica, they did not discover anything new, but rather something similar.
The painters Georg Schrimpf, Alexander Kanoldt, Carlo Mense, and Heinrich Maria Davringhausen were the only painters in Munich to consistently follow the new Magical Realism and the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) styles. These four artists were regarded as the Münchner Gruppe der Neuen Sachlichkei. Already by the beginning of 1919, the gallery owner, Hans Goltz, had assumed the role of sole representative for this new style, just as he was also already representing George Grosz and Paul Klee.
Christian Schad, Count Saint Genois d’Anneaucourt, 1927.
Oil on panel, 103 × 80.5 cm. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Far removed from Futurism and Expressionism, a new interpretation of reality was being heralded by the young artists. These artists rediscovered visible reality that had been pushed into the background during the years of research and experiments. The need for order and security grew after the chaos of war and the threats to freedom and human existence. Everywhere, a new Realism came to the fore. For decades it had seemed that since the start of the modernist art at the end of the 19th century, Realism in art was a closed chapter of the Romantic, landscape, and portrait painters. Only after the political and social collapse did the search begin anew for the real, the objective in a contemporary style.
Heinrich Maria Davringhausen is counted as one of the trailblazers of Magical Realism and New Objectivity. In the Berlin and Munich of the 1920s, he was considered to be among the most shining artistic personalities. He was an elegant bohemian with great charisma and a pioneer of a new world of images. The critics found his ‘blasphemous impudence of spirit’ but at the same time also found that he had a ‘love for craftsman-like perfection.’ In 1920 he made use of a hard, clear style. Everything progressive and outdated is frozen in a stasis, as in the painting, The Black Marketeer. Davringhausen depicted the architectural environment, onto which the profiteer is placed, like a tiger getting ready to jump, with a quick and fleeting perspective. As if drawn with a ruler, it represses any personal style. In this painting, even more intensively than in the previous works, space and perspective perform an interpretive function. The ‘spatial psychology’ appearing again and again with Davringhausen is consciously used in symbolic form here. This was already recognised in 1925 by the author Franz Roh, somewhat later by Erwin Panofsky and recently by the art historian, Christoph Vögele. All the authors point to the parallels found in styles since the Gothic. From now on, the rather hurried perspective and the window view become the favourite vehicle in the works of Davringhausen to engage in psychoanalysis through a clear spatial location and conveying meaning through perspective. The view from the office of The Black Marketeer is one of smooth and cold high-rises. The windowless openings let the exterior space appear to be everywhere.
Through these ‘holes,’ The Black Marketeer seems, like a spider, to be able to reach out and grab loot. However, he is also in danger of crashing down: The openings open themselves into dangerous shafts that lead into endless depths. (Vögele)
Already by 1933, he had fled together with his Jewish wife from the Nazis. A large number of his paintings, all told around 222, were lost, burned, or were wantonly destroyed during the war. Twenty paintings were confiscated for being ‘degenerate.’
In the summer of 1925, the director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, brought together 124 paintings from thirty-two artists for the legendary exhibition titled Neue Sachlichkeit. This exhibition visited several other German cities as well. It was a preliminary assessment of a realist trend that sought to again find the ‘autonomy of the material world.’ Shortly before, the art critic, Franz Roh, had coined the term Magical Realism. Although both terms, Neue Sachlichkeit and Magical Realism, are common today, they are not identical in their nuances.
The Neue Sachlichkeit had many centres in Germany. The most developed form, as was already mentioned, were found in Munich, Berlin, and Dresden with George Grosz, Otto Dix, Fritz Lenk, Hannah Höch, Christian Schad, August Wilhelm Dressler, Karl Hubbuch, Rudolf Schlichter, and Gustav Wunderwald. Schad painted people exclusively. He painted their bodies from a great distance. He painted their bodies under their simple garments, their loneliness, their isolation and their fear. The Cologne artist, Anton Räderscheidt, realised similar themes.
The wealth of motifs was not limited to sublime themes. The world of daily life also became part of the painting. Examples of this are the street corners, austere rows of houses, the railway crossing in the works of by Karl Zerbe; frozen landscapes like those of Adolf Erbslöh; still lifes like those of Georg Scholz, Alexander Kanoldt, or Richard Seewald. Franz Radziwill often draped his landscapes with an eerily seeming empty atmosphere. Carl Grossberg painted the momentousness of machines. Karl Völker painted industrial facilities and their cold utility. Artists painted themselves, friends or relatives, the sick or a pair of lovers. The common characteristic of these paintings is the soberness of their depiction. They are completely without sentimentality. Their simple, unpretentious subjects and the absence of any timidity when facing ugliness mark them. The painting structure appears statically entrenched and is all too often sterile and glassy, as well as lacking in any gestures or traces of the painting process.
Karl Zerbe, Lunar Landscape, 1924. Oil on canvas, 80 × 61 cm.
Gift of Josef Zilcken, Leopold Hoesch Museum, Düren.
Franz Radziwill, Water Tower