ST. LOUIS, June 13, 2022—“Day & Dream in Modern Germany” showcases the Saint Louis Art Museum’s rich collection of modern German prints, drawings and photographs to show how different artists responded to their changing world. The free exhibition opens Aug. 26.
The exhibition’s title references Max Beckmann’s 1946 lithographic portfolio “Day & Dream,” which will be shown in its entirety. Made at the end of his wartime exile in Amsterdam only a year before he came to St. Louis to teach at Washington University, the 15 prints of “Day & Dream” take viewers on a surrealistic tour of Beckmann’s dream world of kings and lovers, soldiers and athletes, who blend seamlessly with scenes from his life in exile.
The exhibition will explore how German art took many forms in the first half of the 20th century, from the brash abstraction of Expressionism to the clinical hyperrealism of New Objectivity. This diversity was a product of the historic events that shaped the lives of artists. Two world wars, political revolution, crippling unemployment, and historic hyperinflation plunged everyday Germans into an endless cycle of existential threats that culminated with the genocide of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution that forced many artists into exile. Artists faced a fundamental choice–should they use their art to confront the world around them, or should they imagine new and better worlds. “Day & Dream” will examine how the opposing responses—activist realism or utopian idealism—were the extreme poles of a debate that defined German art.
More than half of the works in the exhibition will be shown at the museum for the first time.
These include four delicate drypoints of foals by Renée Sintenis, the first female sculptor admitted to the Berlin art academy, who was renowned for her sensitive depictions of animals. Fascinating images of magnified plants from Karl Blossfeldt’s pioneering photo book “Art Forms in Nature” reveal their hidden beauty. Walter Gramatté’s illustrations for a 1925 edition of Georg Büchner’s novella “Lenz,” part of a large recent gift from the artist’s estate, set the standard for psychological portraiture.
These and other exhibited works provide a comprehensive overview of German modernism and complement paintings and sculpture on view in the museum’s permanent collection galleries of modern European art. In a new approach, the exhibition labels will feature writings by the artists and their contemporaries to help history come alive.
The exhibition is curated by Melissa Venator, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow for Modern Art and author of the forthcoming catalogue of the Museum’s collection of German Expressionist paintings. Venator will introduce visitors to the popular music of the era at a record-listening session in the galleries on Friday, Nov. 11 from 6 pm to 8 pm
“Day & Dream in Modern Germany” will be on view in Gallery 235 and the Sidney S. and Sadie M. Cohen Gallery 234 through Feb. 26, 2023.
CONTACT: Matthew Hathaway, 314.655.5493, matthew.hathaway@slam.org
Press images for 'Day & Dream'
Click on any the images in this gallery to download.
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Max Beckmann, German, 1884–1950; "Assault", 1916, published September 1919; drypoint; plate: 6 3/4 x 10 1/8 inches, sheet: 10 3/4 in. x 18 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Neumann/Frumkin Collection, purchased with funds provided by the bequest of Morton D. May, by exchange, the bequest of Florene M. Schoenborn in honor of her father, David May, by exchange, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Museum Shop Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Lester A. Crancer Jr., Phoebe and Mark Weil, The Sidney S. and Sadie Cohen Print Purchase Fund, Mr. and Mrs. David C. Farrell, the Julian and Hope Edison Print Fund, gift of George Rickey, by exchange, bequest of Helen K. Baer, by exchange, Suzanne and Jerry Sincoff, Museum Shop Fund, by exchange, gift of the Buchholz Gallery, by exchange, Museum Purchase, by exchange, Jerome F. and Judith Weiss Levy, bequest of Horace M. Swope, by exchange, and funds given by Fielding Lewis Holmes through the 1988 Art Enrichment Fund, by exchange 236:2002
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Max Beckmann, German, 1884–1950; "Morgue", 1915, published September 1918; drypoint; plate: 10 1/4 x 14 1/8 inches, sheet: 12 9/16 x 19 5/8 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Neumann/Frumkin Collection, purchased with funds provided by the bequest of Morton D. May, by exchange, the bequest of Florene M. Schoenborn in honor of her father, David May, by exchange, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Museum Shop Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Lester A. Crancer Jr., Phoebe and Mark Weil, The Sidney S. and Sadie Cohen Print Purchase Fund, Mr. and Mrs. David C. Farrell, the Julian and Hope Edison Print Fund, gift of George Rickey, by exchange, bequest of Helen K. Baer, by exchange, Suzanne and Jerry Sincoff, Museum Shop Fund, by exchange, gift of the Buchholz Gallery, by exchange, Museum Purchase, by exchange, Jerome F. and Judith Weiss Levy, bequest of Horace M. Swope, by exchange, and funds given by Fielding Lewis Holmes through the 1988 Art Enrichment Fund, by exchange 280:2002
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