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Keywords
German art, 20-th century art, art of the Weimar Republic, German art school, New Objectivity, portrait, Otto Dix
Categories
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
Koroleva, A.Y. (2025) ‘The art of New Objectivity in the context of German art school’, The Art of Eurasia, (4), pp. 158–177. doi:10.46748/ARTEURAS.2025.04.009.
Индексация статей
Abstract
The article focuses on the role and significance of the German artistic tradition in shaping the aesthetic principles of New Objectivity painting. However, there has been a lack of systematic research in art literature on the genesis of these principles and the reasons behind the movement’s retrospective orientation. The study’s hypothesis considers them within the framework of the spiritual atmosphere in the Weimar Republic during the 1920s, which was characterized by the desire to define the ethnocultural identity of modern German painting through emphasizing its proximity to the traditions of the national artistic school. An art-critical analysis of New Objectivity artworks, as well as their comparison with the works of the German Renaissance and the Nazarene Movement, and prominent representatives of the Realist school (A. Menzel) and Impressionism (M. Liebermann), has so far gone unexamined by researchers. Thus, for the first time in scientific literature, a certain similarity was noted in the approach to adapting the formal vocabulary of Old German art, as well as in the realization of the basic tasks of portraiture painting, which is notable in the paintings by Nazarene artists and New Objectivity artworks. The article also shows that the main representatives of this artistic movement were capable of comprehensively perceiving and understanding classical works of German art, viewing them as an integral artistic system. This understanding was crucial for their further creative development and expressive potential.
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