The Worst Exhibition in the World

‘A fascinating – and timely – reminder of how deeply tyrants hate and fear innovative art, and of how much of it survives them and their tawdry regimes’ JOHN BANVILLE

The Nazis’ notorious ‘Degenerate Art’ (Entartete Kunst) exhibition opened in July 1937, occupying nine narrow galleries in a wing of the Hofgarten, Munich. Featuring some 650 works by over 100 artists, the show included the leading lights of modern art, from Kirchner and Kandinsky to Picasso and Mondrian. Confiscated from public museums only weeks before, the artworks were surrounded by derogatory inscriptions, as part of the Nazi propaganda campaign against ‘un-German’ aspects of modern life. One eyewitness account even suggests that actors were hired to perform wild gesticulations of disgust on the gallery floor.

Meanwhile in the nearby Haus der Deutschen Kunst, the first ‘Great German Art Exhibition’ was being held to showcase the blend of realism and kitsch favoured by the Nazi elite.

Entartete Kunst became the most visited exhibition of modern art ever staged, seen by over three million visitors. It marked a pivotal moment when modern art, democracy and totalitarianism collided in spectacular fashion. And in a profoundly ironic twist, far from discrediting modern art, it made the so-called ‘degenerate’ artists still better known, helping to bring them to an international stage.