Paris’ Musée Picasso brings Nazi-hated art to light

No fewer than 16,558 artworks: This was the number of paintings, sculptures and drawings considered by the Nazis to be degenerate art. They were produced by the mentally ill, Jews, Bolsheviks and, more generally, avant-garde artists who did not adhere to the realism glorifying the Aryan “race” that Adolf Hitler, who in his youth failed the entrance examination to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, was determined to impose on German museums. The complete list can be viewed on the website of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the only one to possess the 482 pages of the original typescript listing these works.

In front of each work is an abbreviation indicating its fate: sold (for how much and by which dealer authorized by the regime) or destroyed – over 5,000 were burned in Berlin in 1939. Others are marked “E,” for “Entartete,” meaning they were hung in what was the most important avant-garde art exhibition of the period, Entartete Kunst (“degenerate art”), which took place in Munich in 1937, at the request of Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. The exhibition subsequently toured several German cities and is said to have received between two and three million visitors. Another exhibition designed to celebrate the art promoted by the National Socialist Party was also held at the same time. Entartete Kunst featured some 700 works by around 100 of the most important artists of the time, including Pablo Picasso, whose work played a prominent role in the exhibition.

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