Pre Ww1 Expressionism

During and after World War I, the poor economic status and nationalism in Germany was disastrous, and was a result of a few rebellious artists who made a social criticism through the subjects of their artwork. Some artists such as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Kathe Kollwitz and George Grosz were utterly disgusted by the haplessness and casualties from the result of the first world war, and the German Revolution in 1918-1919. There was social injustice, economic depression, malnourishment, cost of living and police brutality that forced these artists to let their voices be heard for social justices, that drove the artists to develop an irrational tone of pre-WW1 Expressionism. A new idealism began to unfold known as the “New Objectivity”, which was an alternative contemporary vision of society. It soon became a popular anti war social

The artists showed their patriotism by rejecting movements such as Cubism and Expressionism in favor of more “classical” imagery. “New Objectivity” was significant in modern art history due to the reaction of a social and political issue, and instead of art becoming just expression of the human consciousness, it was more of the aspects of the reality of the social and economic experiences that were affected during World War 1.

(Collective vision 229) One artwork that was significant in the anti-war movement was pillars of society painted by George Grosz in 1926. The oil painting was criticized by Nazis as “Degenerate Art”, because of the cheekiness in Grosz’s artistic attitude towards authority. During the interwar period, the new cultural art movement to protest against the new and superior aesthetic political fascism. Pillars of Society is a grotesque, sarcastic portrait of idealized high political figures of Germany in the 1920’s, when Nazism began to grow in the heart of Europe. In Grosz’s painting, there are two German