Leopold Museum

Between joie de vivre and deep abysses

The painter Lotte Laserstein is one of the great rediscoveries of New Objectivity (here: the "Tennis Player").(Bild: © Privatbesitz | Foto: Lotte-Laserstein-Archiv Krausse, Berlin © Bildrecht, Wien 2023)

The exhibition "Splendor and Misery - New Objectivity in Germany" at the Leopold Museum is moving with its topicality.

It is hung very carefully and deliberately - a special moment for a special picture. The museum even sent its own security guard to accompany it from the Tate Modern in London to Vienna: The "Self-Portrait with Model" by Christian Schad is considered one of the masterpieces of New Objectivity - and Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger is particularly pleased that he was able to obtain it on loan for the "Splendor and Misery" show.

Seeing things as they are
The exhibition on New Objectivity in Germany covers the entire period of this style, with which artists reacted to reality after the First World War. "The traumatic experiences, the misery, the many psychological and physical wounds demanded a new representation in art," says Wipplinger. "Away from intoxicating expressionism towards a cool, objective depiction." Or as the painter Otto Dix put it: "It is important to see things as they are."

War victor and wounded man: "Gray Day" by George Grosz.(Bild: © Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger © Bildrecht, Wien 2023)

Hans-Peter Wipplinger hanging the "Self-Portrait with Model" by Christian Schad.(Bild: Reinhard Holl)

Divided into 13 chapters, the works of important artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz, Rudolf Schlichter and many more reflect the 1920s. This clash of bitter poverty and exuberant lust for life, of social injustice and an atmosphere of new beginnings, of industrialization and the fear of progress, of the longing for beauty and the courage to face ugly reality.

Much of it is reminiscent of our society today, which is so torn apart - and the exhibition concludes all the more poignantly with the end of New Objectivity at the hands of the Nazis. "I have dedicated the last room to the Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum, who lived underground in Brussels for a long time and died in Auschwitz. He is representative of so many victims." And for the horror of a time that his sometimes apocalyptic paintings remind us of.

The exhibition runs from May 24 to September 29 at the Leopold Museum.