Before the fall

Olaf Peters, Ronald S. Lauder, Renée Price, Stefanie Heckmann, Andreas Huyssen, Alfred Pfabigan, Ernst Ploil

This exhibition, comprised of nearly 150 paintings and works on paper, will trace the many routes traveled by German and Austrian artists and will demonstrate the artistic developments that foreshadowed, reflected, and accompanied the beginning of World War II. Central topics of the exhibition will be the reaction of the artists towards their historical circumstances, the development of style with regard to the appropriation of various artistic idioms, the personal fate of artists, and major political events that shaped the era. The show assembles key works by leading artists such as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, Oskar Kokoschka, and Alfred Kubin, and artists less familiar to audiences in the United States including Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Albert Paris Gütersloh, Karl Hubbuch, Richard Oelze, Franz Sedlacek, Josef Scharl, and Rudolf Wacker, who will each be represented by small...