Degenerate Art Exhibition Munich 1937

Exhibition Degenerate Art Munich 1937, room with painting “The Beach” by Max Beckmann. In 1937, the “Degenerate Art” exhibition was shown in Munich’s Hofgarten Arcades. As the culmination of the Nazi state’s campaign to defame modern art of all genres, the show publicly denounced over 600 works by around 120 artists who were no longer tolerated in Germany from then on. Among them was the painting “The Beach” by Max Beckmann. This painting has been lost since it was shown in the exhibition.

The “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich in 1937 was a key event organised by the Nazi regime to stigmatise modern art. It took place from 19 July to 30 November and showed over 650 works of art confiscated from German museums, including works by well-known artists such as Emil Nolde, Ernst Barlach, Kurt Schwitters, Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. The aim of the exhibition was to ridicule and denounce avant-garde art styles such as Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism as corrupt, un-German and degenerate. It attracted over two million visitors and reflected the regime’s efforts to control and manipulate forms of cultural expression and promote its idea of Aryan purity.