Published in 1919 in Genius, a deluxe art review founded in the aftermath of the First World War, which had seen Europe devastated both physically and psychologically. Although the cooler observational style of New Objectivity art would emerge in…

Original painted in 1913. In the years preceding the First World War, Jawlensky painted over a hundred women’s faces with black contours and dark, staring eyes. Here the large, heavily contoured, dark eyes gaze out to the viewer, an individual…

The agitated lines and distorted forms give the impression of a rapidly executed sketch of the three female figures momentarily pausing in movement. Kirchner was a brilliant draughtsman who continually sketched from life. Kirchner was the dynamic…

This is the earliest of Meidner’s apocalyptic landscapes, a series of paintings he produced in his Berlin studio during the summer of 1912. These paintings of burning cities and fleeing people, coming just before the outbreak of the First World War…

This painting, originally titled The Levelling, was originally thought to predate the First World War. However it was re-titled when two woodcuts and a drawing, all dated 1918 and all closely resembling the painting were discovered in the Ludwig von…

Points covered The collection narrative that it was the first exhibition of German Expressionist Art in a British public gallery should be established and evidenced.  The impact of the collection on British attitudes towards German Art since the…

Plate 1 of The Fair, a series of ten drypoints published by Maier-Graefe and Reinhard Piper in 1922. Beckmann shows himself as a barker, summoning custom to the Circus Beckmann to see the harsh reality of fairground life which is seen as a microcosm…

Artist proof. Before he printed the main edition of a print, Dix would usually create 2 or 3 ‘proofs’, to check the detail and appearance of the print was to his liking. Dix had returned from the war for less than 2 years when he made this etching,…

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (both 1871-1919) were left wing socialists who formed the revolutionary Spartacus League in Berlin in 1914 in opposition to the First World War. Both were brutally murdered by German troops in January 1919 after…

The story of Ernst Neuschul and the “Black Mother” This picture was painted in 1931 by Ernst Neuschul, who was born near Prague in 1895 to a Jewish family. They ran a hardware store, but he trained as an artist in Prague and Vienna and worked in…