Room 1
The Entartete Kunst exhibit’s main rooms were located on the second floor of the building. Visitors climbed a steep, narrow staircase and emerged to see Gies’ Christus on the east wall. All of the art in Room 1 dealt with religious topics, and the Nazis juxtaposed works by Jewish artists next to pieces by Christian artists depicting Jesus in an unflattering light in order to inflame anti-Semitic sentiments at the “treatment” of Christ at the hand of Jewish artists. The curators kept record of their exhibit, and took photographs of the arrangement of paintings. However, just as their display techniques were slap-dash with some canvases hung without frames, with improper artist citation, and sometimes even hung crookedly, the curators were haphazard with the record-keeping. Not all of the works exhibited in the show were captured on film. Paradoxically these photographs of the exhibit preserve the only known images of several paintings which were destroyed, lost, or sold by the Third Reich.
The black and white photographs below are actual images of the walls of Room 1 of the Entartete Kunst exhibit in Munich, 1937. Clicking on a group of paintings will take you to an image map of larger, color images of those pieces. The individual paintings in these image maps are also clickable, and will lead you to a page containing more information on the particular artwork and artist.
North wall of Room 1, as it appeared in Munich, 1937
West wall of Room 1, as it appeared in Munich, 1937
East wall of Room 1, as it appeared in Munich, 1937
North Wall, Left Side
The paintings below were located on the left side of the north wall. Tragically, four of the five pieces pictured have been lost, probably destroyed. The only currently extant piece is Schmidt-Rottluff’s Kristus, the black and white lithograph in the lower left. The other images have been taken from the contemporary photographs taken by the Nazis, and are the only remaining representations of the lost artwork. The lost pieces are Lüthy’s Madonna, Nolde’s Verlorenes Paradies, and Klein’s Der Neue Vogel and Kopf.
Image map of north wall - click on any painting to go to the information page
North Wall, Center
The center of the north wall was dominated by a huge triptych executed by Emil Nolde, an early member of Die Brücke, and noted Expressionist. A native German and early supporter of the National Socialists, Nolde’s art nevertheless drew extreme criticism from the Party’s cultural watchdogs. Over twenty-five of Nolde’s works appeared in Entartete Kunst, although this altar piece titled Das Leben Christi was the largest and most (in)famous.
Image map of north wall - click on any painting to go to the information page
North Wall, Right Side
The final two paintings on the north wall have been lost. They were Heckrott’s Maienkönigin and Rauh’s Heiliger Franziskus.
Image map of north wall - click on any painting to go to the information page
West Wall
The west wall of Room 1 presented several artists and their work on religious themes. In addition to two works by Nolde and a lost work by Thalheimer (lower left), the most important pieces are two paintings by Max Beckmann. Kreuzabnahme depicts Jesus’s deposition from the Crucifixion with unflattering, painful honesty and Christus und die Ehebrecherin shows the Messiah forgiving an adultress; each of these themes were an affront to National Socialist policies, and they are indicative of Beckmann’s style. The day Entartete Kunst opened, Beckmann took his family to the Netherlands, never to return to his native German soil.
Image map of west wall - click on any painting to go to the information page
East Wall
The east wall of Room 1 was hung with four more works by Emil Nolde. One of them has been lost – Die klugen und die torichten Jungfrauen.
Image map of east wall - click on any painting to go to the information page
East Wall, Christus
One piece dominated the east wall and the entirety of Room 1 – Professor Ludwig Gies’ Christus. Sculpted in 1921 and given to the Lübeck Cathedral in 1922 to serve as a war memorial for the First World War, Gies’ twisted and pain-wracked Savior was meant to parallel the awful suffering of war veterans. Now, the National Socialists labeled the sculpture itself a “horror,” and mocked its place in a cathedral. Tragically, this most striking piece from Entartete Kunst was is missing, most likely destroyed by the Nazi regime.
Click on the image to go to the information page