October 30, 2024 - April 20, 2025
Past Exhibition
DEGENERATE! Hitler’s War on Modern Art is a traveling exhibition that explores how modern art was used by the Nazi party as a tool to sway public opinion. Part history, part art show, the exhibition features famous works labeled as “degenerate” by the regime.
This exhibition includes six sections that explore the time between the end of World War I and the Nazi’s rise to power. It explores a time when Germany’s Weimar Republic experienced a complex period marked by social, economic and political disorder—and thriving cultural and artistic exploration. The Nazis rejected the modern, expressionist artwork surfacing during this period, confiscated the work (labeled “degenerate”), and manipulated the works to indoctrinate public opinion.
Visitors to this exhibition will interact with these famous works of modern art and be encouraged to consider the relationship between art, culture and society.
Works feature multiple perspectives, non-realistic use of color, abstract compositions, nuanced meaning, technological innovations, and unidealized figurative depictions.
This section features diverse figurative depictions of workers and individuals experiencing social, emotional and/or economic challenges or differences. It also includes depictions of WWI veterans with physical injuries and those affected by trauma.
Cityscapes, busy streets, and lively bars packed with mixed-class crowds are depicted in this section alongside compositions with transparent layers and sketched or unfinished elements. These are presented with works of abstractly rendered structures, unnatural elements, and unconventional uses of color.
This part of the exhibition includes images of older women, showcasing signs of aging, worn facial expressions or body language, and non-Aryan features. Other works show images of sex workers, dancers, or depictions of women in various stages of undress.
Pieces by Ludwig Meidner and Marc Chagall are in this section—two of the six Jewish artists shamed in the Entartete Kunst exhibition. Works vary in technique from woodcuts to watercolors and explore themes like primitivism, psychological trauma, and boredom.
This section is unique to the Maltz Museum’s installation of DEGENERATE!, and showcases works by Hungarian artist, Jolan Gross-Bettelheim, who lived in Cleveland from 1925 to 1956. She had a successful career in the U.S. as a printmaker, producing works rich in social and political commentary.
The exhibition is locally supported by:
Expressionist Enthusiasts
Fauvism Fanatics
Impressionist Inamoratos
Additional support from:
Friends of the Maltz Museum, Marilyn and Kenneth Oif, Nancy and Allan Pearl
This project is funded in part by the Ohio Holocaust and Genocide Memorial and Education Commission.
DEGENERATE! Hitler’s War on Modern Art, an original exhibition created by and on loan from the Jewish Museum Milwaukee
Image courtesy of Jewish Museum Milwaukee: No Title (Yellow, Red, Black, White Abstract), 1915, Wassily Kandinsky. Monograph. From the collection of Kevin and Meg Kinney.