New Objectivity
also: Neue Sachlichkeit
New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit, 'new matter-of-factness') was the dominant realist current in German art during the Weimar Republic, named from the 1925 exhibition that critic Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub organized in Mannheim. Reacting against Expressionist emotion, its painters returned to sharp focus, cold color, and unsentimental description - then turned that clarity on the society around them: profiteers, war cripples, prostitutes, and the anxious middle class. The movement's verist wing laced its realism with savage caricature; its other pole, sometimes called Magic Realism, rendered everyday objects and figures with a still, unsettling precision. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 the work was banned and displayed as 'degenerate art', but its unsparing vision largely defines how the Weimar era is remembered.
Defining characteristics
- Cool, detached naturalism: sharp focus, smooth finish, no visible sentiment
- Hard-edged forms with tight, precise contours
- Cold, sometimes acidic color and flat, even lighting
- Unflinching contemporary subjects: veterans, profiteers, city nightlife, the middle class
- Satirical exaggeration and grotesque detail in the verist wing (Dix, Grosz, Scholz)
- Everyday objects rendered with still, eerie precision (the Magic Realism wing)
Key figures
- Otto Dix (1891-1969) — Verist painter and printmaker of war's wreckage and Weimar society
- Max Beckmann (1884-1950) — Painter of compressed, symbol-laden triptychs of modern anxiety
- George Grosz (1893-1959) — Savage caricaturist of the German bourgeoisie and militarists
- Christian Schad (1894-1982) — Master of cool, clinical portraits of the Berlin demimonde
- August Sander (1876-1964) — Photographer whose typological portraits documented German society
Example works
- The War — Otto Dix (1929-1932)
- Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden — Otto Dix (1926)
- War Veterans' Association (Kriegerverein) — Georg Scholz (1922)
Sources
- New Objectivity - Wikipedia encyclopedia