Artists Between the Splendour and Misery of the Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic was a society in a state of exception: hyperinflation, mass unemployment, and political violence on the streets stood in stark contrast to an unprecedented cultural flourishing. Berlin became the world capital of modernity - and art became the seismograph of this contradictory era.

Artistic responses to this upheaval were highly diverse. Lesser Ury held fast to an impressionist visual language, capturing the fleeting life of the metropolis in the radiant light of Berlin. Otto Dix and Georg Grosz, by contrast, radicalized their pictorial vocabulary: from the anarchic impulse of Dada, they developed New Objectivity - a ruthless, often bitterly sardonic reckoning between war trauma, decadence, and the looming fascism. Otto Nagel and Karl Hofer chose the path of expressive realism, turning their gaze toward the losers of modernity: the poor, the dispossessed, the forgotten.

Though these styles were so varied, they share a common impulse: art as a response to social upheaval, as a stance and as a historical witness. The special exhibition "Ruin and Intoxication" at the Neue Nationalgalerie brings together compelling works by all these artists. Art historian Thomas R. Hoffmann uses this as an occasion to present further works and place them in thematic, substantive, and stylistic dialogue.