Verboten/Forbidden

Conceived by Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi party held the Entarte Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition in Munich in 1937. An ideological move intended to censor and dismantle the individual creativity of modern artists, the exhibition was wildly popular and featured more than 650 artworks and books that were confiscated from museums. To enhance the humiliation effect, the works were hung haphazardly and accompanying texts belittled and criticized the artists. More than 3 million people saw the show as it traveled to twelve other cities. After the exhibit, most of the works were either sold at embarrassingly low prices or destroyed.

Some artists were able to recover from this humiliating event while others’ careers and lives were permanently destroyed. This exhibition features work by the same artists who were included in the Entarte Kunst exhibition, such as: Erich Heckel, Georg Grosz, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Max Pechstein, Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website