February 2007: Berlin – Exhibitions – Kunst und Propaganda

Art and Propaganda - Clash of Nations 1930-1945 - An exhibition of the German Historical Museum

Curators: Dr. Hans-Jörg Czech und Dr. Nikola Doll

As part of its series “Political Iconography” the German Historical Museum presents an international exhibition, “Art and Propaganda: The Clash of Nations 1930-1945.” Running from 26 January to 29 April 2007 and featuring over 400 works, the exhibition is devoted to examining art that served as propaganda for war and the state in the first half of the twentieth century. Alongside artefacts from Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union, the exhibition introduces the public to objects never before seen outside the United States.
In close collaboration with the Wolfsonian collections in Miami Beach and Genoa, and along with numerous loans from Russia, the DHM presents its wide-ranging collection of National Socialist art. “Art and Propaganda” seeks to identify and compare the visual models of political propaganda employed from 1930 to 1945 by the competing political and social systems of Fascism, National Socialism, Soviet Communism, and, for the first time, the American “New Deal.” In this context, paintings, graphic works, sculpture, and the applied arts are to be critiqued and categorized in an effort to reveal the continuities as well as the differences between the iconographic strategies employed by the four nations whose propaganda is under examination. Objects from the DHM’s collection of National Socialist materials will be supplemented by artefacts from the Wolfsonian-FIU in Miami Beach, most of which have not before been exhibited in Europe.