In reaction to the National Socialist Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition in Munich in 1937, plans were made in London for a counter-exhibition. Involved in the conception and organisation were the art historian Herbert Read, the artist Roland Penrose and the gallerist Nöel ‘Peter’ Norton (London Gallery) – she later left the organisation. The group cooperated with the Swiss collector and art dealer Irmgard Burchard, the art critic Oto Bihalji-Merin and the artist Richard P. Lohse (Frowein 1986, 35). The 20th Century German Art exhibition was planned to offer visibility to artists who had been defamed at the Munich exhibition and were persecuted by the National Socialist regime. At the same time, no work from the Entartete Kunst exhibition was shown (N. 1938).

The organisers were advised by the art historian Edith Hoffmann, who was exiled in London. Furthermore, as Lucy Wasensteiner was able to show, there was collaboration with Paul Westheim and Charlotte Weidle in Paris and the Guggenheim Jeune Gallery in London (Wasensteiner 2018a, 59-61). It was thus an international network that was able to gather works from private collections, museums and galleries in London in a very short time. The exhibition venue, the New Burlington Galleries, was located on the fourth floor of a building at 5 Burlington Gardens in Mayfair. The International Surrealist Exhibition organised by Herbert Read, Roland Penrose and David Gascoyne had already taken place there in 1936. The Masters of French 19th Century Painting exhibition, curated by Alfred Flechtheim, was also held at the New Burlington Galleries in 1936, bringing together works from Manet to van Gogh and Cézanne (Flechtheim 1937). It was thus a well-established venue for modern art in London. Patrons of the show included the zoologist Julian Huxley, the architect Le Corbusier, the painter Pablo Picasso and the writer Virginia Woolf (20th Century German Art, invitation card).

Although the exhibition had a staunchly political background, the back side of the invitation card pointed out that the art itself was apolitical: “The purpose of the Exhibition is to give a comprehensive survey of German Art of the twentieth century. The organisers of the Exhibition are, of course, aware that much of this art is now in official disfavour in the country of its origin, and that many of the artists are exiles. Their motives, however, are not political. They believe that art is a mode of expression appealing to mankind in its universal aspects, above time and race. They believe, therefore, that the art which has for many years been held in the highest esteem in Germany should not be completely neglected: that it has its place in the historical evolution of European painting and sculpture; and that it should be judged by the aesthetic standards which are proper to art.” (20th Century German Art, invitation card). As Cordula Frowein has pointed out, more radical political positions such as John Heartfield’s photomontages or Rudolf Schlichter's political works from the 1920s (Frowein 1986, 37) were not included in the exhibition.

The exhibition catalogue reads like a rollcall of established modernism, naming many of the exhibited artworks and their lenders. The 20th Century German Art exhibition of 1938 brought together more than 300 works by 64 artists, such as Otto Dix, Oskar Kokoschka, Käthe Kollwitz, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Kurt Schwitters. On display were Ernst Barlach’s Mother and Child (1920), Max Beckmann’s Triptych: Temptation (1937), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Red Houses (1913), Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s Torso (1910) and Ludwig Meidner’s Portrait from the Goldberg private collection in Switzerland. In a second section of the catalogue, as an addendum, as it were, further participants were listed under the heading “Artists now working in England”, including Erna Auerbach, Martin Bloch and Hans Feibusch.
The art historian Lucy Wasensteiner was able to identify the more than 90 lenders – including many private collectors (London 1938, 94-151): 20 loans came from the collection of the emigrated banker and collector Hugo Simon alone – including Erich Heckel’s Bathing Scene (1914). Others came from Theodor and Ellen Plaut and Erich and Senta Göritz – both couples had emigrated to England. Swiss collectors such as Sigmund Pollag and Walter and Alice Minnich also gave works. Some of the loans were for sale, including Max Liebermann’s Potato Gatherer (1874) loaned by the art dealer Max Stern, who had emigrated to London. Artists such as Willi Baumeister and Wassily Kandinsky were also among the lenders. The sculptor Benno Elkan, who had emigrated to Great Britain, was represented by three works, including the bust Head of Alfred Flechtheim (1912), a reference to the art dealer Flechtheim who had recently died in London. Elkan also lent two paintings by Karl Hofer and Oskar Kokoschka (London 1938, 130).
Some of the artists featured in the 20th Century German Art exhibition had been presented four years earlier at the Exhibition of German Jewish Artists’ Work, among them Erna Auerbach, Max Liebermann and Benno Elkan. The Exhibition of German Jewish Artists’ Work was organised by Carl Braunschweig and held at the Parson’s Gallery in 1934. The two exhibitions could be read as snapshots of an art history in motion against a background of persecution and exile: Whereas the 1934 show captured a situation in transition – many of the exhibitors were not yet in exile, or had not yet perished – defamation and expulsion were already well advanced by 1938. In their own way, both exhibitions contributed to the visibility and perception of German (and Austrian) art under pressure in London in the 1930s.

In 1938, Peter Thoene’s paperback Modern German Art was published by Penguin Books and, like the catalogue, was included in the price of admission to the 20th Century German Art exhibition (Elliott 2018, 153). Behind the pseudonym, Thoene was the art historian Oto Bihalji-Merin, who had emigrated to Switzerland. Originally from the Austro-Hungarian town of Semlin, the art historian and writer had lived in Berlin from 1924 and joined the circle of the journal Linkskurve around Johannes R. Becher. Bihalji-Merin later emigrated to Paris, fought in the Spanish Civil War and then went into exile in Switzerland (Raddatz 1988). There, Oto Bihalji-Merin wrote and published his book Modern German Art, for which Herbert Read contributed the introduction. In his text, Bihalji-Merin refers to the art-political situation in Nazi Germany, knowledgeably guiding the reader through the modern art movements in Germany of the past decades, their contradictions and rivalries, focusing on works by Otto Dix, Käthe Kollwitz and others. In his book, which comprises 108 pages and 32 illustrations, Bilhalji-Merin opens up a view of avant-garde German painting in the context of socio-historical and political conditions from the early 20th century to his present (Thoene 1938).

Franz Marc’s painting Blue Horses (1911) was reproduced on the exhibition catalogue cover and on the invitation card, as well as in Thoene’s/Bihalji-Merin’s book. The painting had already been printed in Fritz Burger’s survey work Einführung in die moderne Kunst (Introduction to Modern Art) (1917), which played a major role in the recognition and dissemination of Expressionist art. Blue Horses went on to gain wide recognition and became a key image for the artist and for Expressionism. Curt Glaser acquired the painting at the first “Blaue Reiter” (Blue Rider) exhibition. Via the Karl Caspari Gallery (Munich) and the Kunstsalon Wolfsberg (Zurich) it wound up at the Karl Nierendorf Gallery in New York, where it was acquired by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis/Minnesota in 1942. It became the symbolic painting of the 20th Century German Art exhibition in 1938. Numerous international shows, including the 50 Ans d'Art Moderne exhibition at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, featured Blue Horses. (Dogramaci 2016).
The 20th Century German Art exhibition attracted a large number of visitors. Several thousand people came to the opening and the show was extended several times, finally closing on 27 August 1938. In addition to positive press reviews in The Spectator and the Catholic Herald (Wasensteiner 1938b, 186), there were also negative and polemical voices, such as in The New Statesman and Nation newspaper, which reacted negatively above all to the distortions of form in Expressionism: “I must now state that in so far as the German Exhibition at the New Burlington Gallery is propaganda, it is, my opinion, extremely bad propaganda. People who got to see the Exhibition are only too likely to say: ‘If Hitler doesn’t like these pictures, it’s the best thing I’ve heard about Hitler.’ For the general impression made by the Show upon the ordinary public must be one of extraordinary ugliness. [...] These German painters in their passionate pursuit of expressiveness at any cost, use the utmost violence of colour and design. Emphasis is all. And the result is a combination of coarseness and hysteria, two of the chief qualities that make the Nazi régime so detestable.” (Mortimer 1938, 112) Visual habits were challenged, comparisons were drawn in the press to French art currently on the London art market: “Before their suppression or exile they [the exhibited German artists] formed the advance guard of modern German art, and to us who have been (artistically speaking) spoon-fed for so long from Paris this exhibition of a national spirit so different from that of France comes as a shock. What is called the ‘Expressionist’ movement is here seen to be the natural way of painting in post-war Germany. […] It is a disturbing show, and an intensely national one.” (N. 1938)

The 20th Century German Art exhibition, which also attracted attention in the shape of a lecture by Max Beckmann and a recital by Paul Robeson (The Manchester Guardian, 3 August 1938, p. 18), lived on through the sale of some of the works: works by Max Liebermann, Franz Marc and Ernst Barlach went to the Whitworth Gallery (now Whitworth Art Gallery) in Manchester, including Barlach’s print Death (Kindertod) (1919; http://gallerysearch.ds.man.ac.uk/Detail/14764). The Whitworth Gallery was thus able to supplement an already existing bronze by Barlach (Staff Correspondents 1938). The London Society acquired Liebermann’s painting Professor Albert Einstein (London 1938, 96f.) Some works from the exhibition subsequently went on tour and were shown at the McLellan Galleries in Glasgow and at various locations in the United States, including the Milwaukee Art Institute, the Saint Louis City Art Museum and the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton (Holz 1938).
More than 20 years after 20th Century German Art exhibition, Marlborough Fine Art, founded by the émigré art dealers Harry Fischer and Frank Lloyd, presented in 1959 an exhibition titled Art in Revolt. Germany 1905–25. Exhibition of Aid in World Refugee Year. By hosting the exhibition during World Refugee Year, Marlborogh Fine Art placed German modernism – similarly to the 20th Century German Art show of 1938 at New Burlington Galleries – in the context of political art under threat.