November Group

also: Novembergruppe

school 1918-1935 Germany Europe

The November Group (Novembergruppe) was founded in Berlin on 3 December 1918, in the first weeks of the German Revolution, and took its name from that revolution's month. Led by the painters Max Pechstein and César Klein and soon merging with the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, it bound together some 170 artists - expressionists, Dadaists, Bauhaus members, Italian Futurists, and later architects and musicians - less by a common style than by shared socialist politics: the union of art and the people, and a say in how art schools and cultural law were run. Its exhibitions mixed cubist, futurist, and constructivist work and hosted international guests from Chagall to Malevich. Banned from public exhibition after 1933 and stripped of legal capacity in 1935, the group was pilloried by the Nazis as degenerate.

For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions , which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or
For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions , which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete orCC BY-SA 3.0 de (credit: Unknown Unknown) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Stylistic syncretism - 'cubofutoexpressionism': cubist fragmentation, futurist motion, expressionist distortion in one picture
  • Political, urban subjects: workers, street life, and the modern metropolis
  • Angular, agitated compositions and sharp satirical figuration (Dix, Grosz)
  • Bold graphic contrast, poster-like clarity, and photomontage (Höch)
  • Programmatic eclecticism: painting shown beside architecture, film, music, and stage design at the same exhibitions

Key figures

  • Max Pechstein (1881-1955) — Expressionist painter who co-led the group from its founding meeting
  • César Klein (1876-1965) — Co-founder who served on the group's first working committee
  • Otto Dix (1891-1969) — Radical painter of postwar street life and war's mutilated bodies
  • George Grosz (1893-1959) — Satirical draughtsman of the Weimar bourgeoisie and militarists
  • Hannah Höch (1889-1978) — Photomontagist who designed the cover of the group's journal NG

Example works

  • Proun Room — El Lissitzky (1923)
  • Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany — Hannah Höch (1919)

Sources

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