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Shell-Shocked: Expressionism after the Great War: Selections from the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies
November 9, 2008–April 19, 2009 | Ahmanson Building
Extraordinarily resilient, German expressionism was profoundly changed by World War I (1914–1918), which first enthralled and then devastated the "generation of 1914" throughout Europe. The young German artists—like their counterparts in England and France—initially welcomed the "Great War" as a grand adventure. The expressionists saw it as an apocalyptic transition from the rigid social and cultural constraints of the constitutional monarchy of Wilhelm II. But, as documented in the artists' periodicals Kriegszeit (War Time) and Der Bildermann (The Picture Man) on view in this exhibition, this euphoria soon yielded to pacifism and outright political protest in opposition to a war that was taking a heavy toll in such unprecedented battles of attrition as the Somme and Verdun. Departing from the arcadian landscapes and anguished probing of the individual psyche of early expressionism, artists now conveyed instead political protest and communal utopia visions of a new humanity. Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this exhibition presents more than sixty prints, drawings, posters and books from the museum's Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Curator: Timothy Benson, Rifkind Center, LACMA.
Above: Otto Lange (Germany, Dresden, 1879–1944), Vision, probably after 1919, print, woodcut and color monotype printed in green, blue, purple and black on heavy wove paper, image: 20 3/4 x 18 7/16 in. (52.7 x 46.8 cm); sheet: 26 9/16 x 19 7/8 in. (67.4 x 50.4 cm), the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.288.199).
Top: Otto Schubert (Germany, Dresden, 1892–1972), Wounded (detail), circa 1917, print, lithograph on laid paper, image: 9 9/16 x 17 1/2 in. (24.29 x 44.45 cm) irregular; sheet: 21 3/4 x 15 in. (55.25 x 38.1 cm), the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64k).
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