Kunstmuseum Basel - Castaway Modernism Basel’s Acquisitions of "Degenerate" Art & The Collector Curt Glaser
During the winter of 2022, the Kunstmuseum Basel present two exhibitions dedicated to acquisitions made by the museum during the second world war due to the sale of "degenerate" art. Thus, Castaway Modernism - Basel’s Acquisitions of “Degenerate” Art and The Collector Curt Glaser - From Champion of Modernism to Refugee.
This story is also telling the story of the museum which houses an important number of modernism pictures, from Mondrian, Picasso, Klee, Ernst, etc. When the museum was moved from its old house to its new building in 1936, the architects conceived a building we're each floor is more or less dedicated to an important phase in art history: modern art, contemporary art, old masters, impressionism, etc.
At the time, the museum didn't house a lot of modern pictures/contemporary pictures. Thus, the director of the time, Otto Fischer preferred to buy old masters pictures and not modern picture due to his personal taste. When the new museum director Georg Schmidt arrived in 1939, one of his important goal was to build a comprehensive modern art collection. Thus, he began to look at future acquisition and more precisely at opportunities made by the Nazi due to their censure of modern art. As the Nazi will need money for the war, the director will have the opportunity to visit Berlin in May 1939 at the invitation of the dealers Buchholz and Gurlitt, who had been tasked with “liquidating” the art. And later in the year, twenty-one outstanding works of German and French modernism will be bought by the museum with a grand from the city of Basel.
To give a bit of context, German museums had spent considerable time, money and research to acquire works by Modern artist from Expressionism, the New Objectivity, Cubism, and Dadaism as well as French modernism.
When the Nationalist Socialists arrived at the power of Germany in 1933, they branded modern art as "degenerate" art. A few years later, during the summer of 1937, the authorities seized 21 000 works of “degenerate” art from German museums, and works made by Jewish artists and works with Jewish or political subjects.
Most of those works, or at least the most important one will be exhibited in the exhibition "Degenerate Art" held in Munich in 1937. From the 21 000 works, only 780 paintings and sculptures and 3,500 works on paper were declared “internationally salable” to country abroad, in Europe or in the world. These works were moved to a storage site in the north of Berlin, and a selection was made to make an auction in Lucerne in late June 1939 by Theodor Fischer, Karl Buchholz and Hildebrand Gurlitt who had the task to sell those works.
Much of the “unsalable” stockpile was burned in Berlin on March 20, 1939.
The auction titled "Modern Masters from German Museums" was held at the Galerie Theodor Fischer, Lucerne, on June 30, 1939. Days before the auction began, the new director fo the Kunstmuseum Basel asked the Kunstmuseum’s board of trustees and the Canton of Basel-City for a special fund in the amount of CHF 100,000 for acquisitions of art formerly held by German museums, sadly they will only allow CHF 50,000, a few hours before the auction started.
In a few hours, the director had to choose eight works: Paul Klee’s Villa R, a still life by Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix’s Portrait of the Artist’s Parents I, Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait as a Half-Length Nude with Amber Necklace II, and Franz Marc’s Two Cats, Blue and Yellow, and Animal Destinies as well as André Derain’s Still Life with Calvary, a work on paper by Marc Chagall, and his large painting The Pinch of Snuff (Rabbi).
After the auction in Lucerne, the works sent from Berlin were set up in the Kunstmuseum’s skylight hall. They bought twelve more pictures including Max Beckmann’s The Nizza in Frankfurt am Main, Lovis Corinth’s Ecce Homo, two paintings by Modersohn-Becker, and Oskar Kokoschka’s Bride of the Wind.
Due to the tight budget, some of the works will be able to be assured such as Pablo Picasso’s The Soler Family, James Ensor’s Death and Masks, and Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s Seated Girl.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Kunstmuseum Basel | Neubau
Date: October 2022 - February 2023
Curator: Eva Reifert, Tessa Friederike Rosebrock, Anita Haldemann and Judith Rauser
Ticket: Available on the website of the Kunstmuseum Basel OR at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Kunstmuseum Basel
Kunstmuseum Basel
St. Alban-Graben 8
CH-4010 Basel
Phone: +41 61 206 62 62
Fax: +41 61 206 62 52
Mail: info@kunstmuseumbasel.ch