Arcana:

Kaiser, Fritz & der Reichspropagandaleitung (Reich Propaganda Leadership, Department of Culture). Berlin, GERMANY: Verlag fur Kultur und Wirtschaftswerbung, 1937. First Edition. 8vo. Stapled Pictorial Wrappers. Exhibition Catalog. Near Fine.. 32pp, 59 b&w illustrations + no illustrations, 1 b&w cover illustration. Text in typographic German Gothic script. In a protective clear acetate dustwrapper. "Entartete Kunst" - or "Degenerate Art" - was the term adopted in the 1920s by Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party to deride Modernist Art. During his dictatorship, thousands of contemporary artworks were removed from German state-owned museums and banned on the grounds that such art was un-German, an "insult to German feeling", Jewish, or Communist in nature. Prominent artists such as Otto Dix, Georg Grosz, John Heartfield, Erich Heckel, E.L. Kirchner, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Ludwig Meidner, Wilhelm Morgner, Emil Nolde, Oskar Schlemmer, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Kurt Schwitters were subjected to sanctions that included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden from even making art. While contemporary and abstract styles of art were prohibited, the Nazis promoted paintings and sculptures that were traditional in manner and that exalted the "blood and soil" values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience. "Degenerate Art" was also the title of an exhibition mounted by the Nazis in Munich in 1937 consisting of six hundred and fifty artworks chaotically hung and accompanied by text labels deriding the art. Designed to inflame public opinion against modernism and its practitioners, the exhibition was attended by over two million citizens during its subsequent travels to venues in Berlin, Leipzig, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main, Wien, Salzburg, Stettin, and Halle. A bright, exceptionally well-preserved example of the 1937 true first printing distributed at the initial Munich presentation of "Entartete Kunst" showing a few soft creases and some some unobtrusive chipping to the front cover as well as light age-toning to its acidic rear cover and newsprint textblock accompanied by a Fine condition copy of the two volume 1972 Silver Fox Press facsimile reprint and English language translation booklet on heavy acid-free paper along with the illustrated six page brochure for the 1972 New York "Degenerate Art (Forbidden Art in Nazi Germany)" exhibition held at Helen Serger's La Boetie Inc. Inventory Number: 027019