ST. LOUIS, Feb. 28, 2024—Modern German art has been a focal point of the Saint Louis Art Museum’s holdings for more than 80 years. A new catalogue offers a closer look at the museum’s collection of German Expressionist art, which is one of the strongest and most diverse in the United States.
“German Expressionism: Paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum” examines 48 works that were made from 1905-1939 by more than two dozen artists. Their styles and subjects span the arc of the well-known movement.
Artists associated with the artist group Brücke are a strength of the collection, including a dozen paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Pechstein, two of its leading figures. Other works represented in the catalogue range from Paula Modersohn-Becker’s “Two Girls in Front of Birch Trees” from before the movement came into existence, to Erich Heckel’s “Bathers” on the brink of World War I, to Paul Klee’s “The Man of Confusion” painted while he was in exile from Nazi Germany.
Expressionism was Germany’s first major art movement of the 20th century. Inspired by, among others, the art of Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch, a younger generation rejected academic conventions and the visible world in favor of abstraction and experimentation. The art they invented achieved international acclaim and influenced fields from literature to dance.
“There’s a common misconception about Expressionist art that it’s all harsh, jagged angles and clashing colors,” said Melissa Venator, SLAM’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of Modern Art, who authored the new book. “In fact, figurative styles were the rule, and colors really varied by artist. This diversity makes sense, considering that the movement was active for three decades and encompassed hundreds of artists.”
Research for the 300-page book included a three-year technical analysis of each painting undertaken by SLAM’s conservation department, which houses specialized labs for paintings, three-dimensional objects, works on paper, textiles and frames staffed by experts who care for the more than 36,000 artworks in SLAM’s global collection.
Of the 48 paintings in the book, 11 will be featured in a Spring 2024 exhibition, “Concealed Layers: Uncovering Expressionist Paintings.” Highlights include stick-figure studio graffiti in Oskar Kokoschka’s “The Painter II,” revealed by infrared reflectography. A previously undiscovered lake scene appeared in the X-radiograph of August Macke’s “Landscape with Cows, Sailboat, and Painted-in Figures,” and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s important early painting “Portrait of a Woman” regained its original title—”Portrait of Gerti”—from an inscription on the back.
“Modern German art has a long history at the Saint Louis Art Museum, dating to 1940 when then-Director Perry T. Rathbone had the foresight to acquire Lyonel Feininger’s ‘The Glorious Victory of the Sloop’ “Maria,’” the first of several purchases that established a foothold for German modernism in the collection” said Min Jung Kim, the museum’s Barbara B. Taylor Director. “After so many decades, these works have become part of the fabric of the collection. This catalogue is the newest contribution to this living history.”
Rathbone went on to curate the first major American exhibition of Max Beckmann’s art, which opened in 1948. Two weeks later, St. Louis collector Morton D. May bought his first Beckmann painting. May would purchase hundreds of works of modern German art, including most of the paintings in the new “German Expressionism” catalogue. After his death in 1983, he left his vast collection to the museum, giving it the largest collection of Beckmann paintings in the world. May’s gift inspired museum leaders to expand the collection with major acquisitions of contemporary German art in the 1980s and ‘90s.
“German Expressionism: Paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum” is available for purchase online and in museum shops. Authored by Venator, contributors include Simon Kelly, Courtney Books, Molly Moog, and Lacy Murphy.
The related exhibition, “Concealed Layers,” is on view for free March 15–Oct. 27 in the Caro Nichols Holmes Gallery 214 and Sherry and Gary Wolff Gallery 215.
CONTACT: Molly Morris, 314.655.5250, molly.morris@slam.org
