An epic moment was experienced at the Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett auction in May 1961. “36,000 marks for The Young Couple, by Emil Nolde… At 1, at 2… Awarded!” As the hammer fell, the audience rose to their feet to applaud, and Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza smiled.
He had been bidding for minutes against another couple of collectors who also wanted that watercolor. The figure was exorbitant for the painting, but the baron had reasons to insist on getting this piece of German expressionism, painted in the 1930s.
On the one hand, he broke with the tradition of his father, Heinrich Thyssen, who had built an extraordinary collection of Old Masters, and inaugurated his own collecting style. And on the other hand, he was betting precisely on the avant-garde of the early 20th century, despised by the Nazis, who even included Emil Nolde in the contemptuous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition of 1937.
“The fact that these artists had been oppressed by the National Socialist regime and the art officially labeled as ‘degenerate’ was an additional incentive for me to collect them,” he would later admit.
At that same 1961 auction, Baron Thyssen bought another nine paintings, including the abstracts Serge Poliakoff, Maria Elena Viera da Silva, Gustave Singer, Alfred Manessier and Francis Bott, Italian figuratives such as Mario Sironi and Marino Marini, and other German expressionists such as Max Pechstein and Rudolf Levy, the latter also of Jewish descent. A whole declaration of intent through art, which identified the expressionists as a symbol of freedom in federal Germany.
German Expressionism in 2020
The exhibition German Expressionism in the collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza comes ahead of the commemoration of the centenary of the collector’s birth (1921-2002) and is the result of the hard work of adaptation by the National Museum-Thyssen Bornemisza in the face of the pandemic.
This temporary exhibition, which can be visited until March 14, has been organized in record time and at a lower cost, which has allowed the museum ticket price to be reduced to nine euros (permanent collection included) for several months.
The new exhibition, curated by Paloma Alarcó, head of Modern Painting at the museum, represents an almost anthropological reconstruction of the history of art, thanks to the baron’s efforts to rescue the “degenerate paintings” of the Third Reich from oblivion. One of them is Metropolis, by George Grosz, also included in Entartete Kunst with the denigrating label: “Art as a Marxist propaganda tool against military service”.
Interestingly, the Nazis despised German expressionism, but they were quick to put these paintings on the market, “behind closed doors”, to raise funds for the war. And so they fell into the hands of dealers who, in the postwar period, dedicated themselves to rehabilitating modern German art and dignifying its authors. Some time later, Baron Thyssen managed to buy some of these paintings, such as Summer Clouds (1913), also by Nolde, or Portrait of Siddi Heckel (1913) by Erich Heckel, which can now be visited in Madrid.
Portrait of Siddi Heckel (1913) by Erich Heckel
The same painter Grosz, exiled in America, acquired Metropolis in 1959, shortly before he died, and sold it to the New York dealer Richard L. Feigen, from whom Baron Thyssen would buy it in 1978.
There are 80 works that cover eight spaces. The exhibition is structured around a first room, called “Workshops”, which refers to the “laboratories of ideas” in which the studios of artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel became. Next is a room with the “Cultural References” that inspired the expressionists: Les Vessenots en Auvers (1890), by Van Gogh, Sunset (1888), by Munch, or Comings and Goings (1887), by Gauguin, which could be considered the predecessors of modernism.
In the third room, “Exteriors”, there are landscapes such as Summer in Nidden (1919-1920), by Max Pechstein, Bridge in the Marsh (1910), by Emil Nolde, or Brick Factory (1907), by Eric Heckel, that recall the importance of outdoor space and nature as an extension of the artist’s studio. The bridge between the exterior and interior world, tradition and modernity through abstraction, is reflected in the next room, “Popular Airs”, which brings together works by Kandinsky, Paul Klee, August Macke and Jawlensky. The chapter “Diffusion” -which includes paintings by Paul Klee, Kandinsky, Macke and Lyonel Feininger- recalls the evolution of those expressionist manifestos of the early 20th century, which were overshadowed by the Great War. The “Stigmatization”, “Rehabilitation” and “Internationalization” rooms summarize how history progressed.
Fränzi before a carved chair 1910. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
German Expressionism is not only one of the most comprehensive European collections of modern art, with its explosion of unnatural colours, expressive force and aggressive brushstrokes, but also an X-ray of the convulsive beginning of the 20th century in Europe. What better occasion than this year 2020 to revisit it.
In addition to this temporary exhibition, you can also access the permanent collection of the museum, which has adapted the strict health safety protocols, including the reduction of capacity. This allows the public to enjoy, almost exclusively, the hoppers, caravaggios, monets or van goghs that are part of the museum.
