20th Century

Käte Steinitz (1889–1975) is today best known for her collaboration with Kurt Schwitters. This monograph covers her multifaceted activities as an artist and writer in avant-garde circles during the Weimar Republic, as well as her experience as an emigrant, art historian, and promoter of modernism in the United States.  

The second volume from the “Art of the Lost Generation” Museum continues to explore artists who were excluded, persecuted, censored or driven into obscurity under the Nazi regime. As one of the era’s few remaining contemporary witnesses, Heinz R. Böhme has assembled this collection to preserve the legacy for future generations.  

Carl Grossberg’s (1894–1940) painting career was bracketed by the two world wars. He drew his subject matter from “the enormous wealth of new forms in the world of ...

A book with bestseller potential – Edvard Munch, a key figure of European modernism, and one of his most important themes: angst. Everyone knows it and fears it – regardless of cultural and social background – yet it is also essential to life, as a driving force and source of energy. Hardly any painter has captured this aspect of the human condition so powerfully as Munch – an artist whose unique body of work leaves no one unmoved.  

A journey to the art capital of the 1930s: Paris. The avant-garde group abstraction-création and its fifty or so members were an inspiration to the art world with their clear lines and kaleidoscopic experiments with form. Leading figures of abstraction joined together to support artistic freedom and oppose the rise of fascism, before modernism shifted its gravitational centre to New York.  

Alongside artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, Richard Pousette-Dart (1916–1992) was one of the most important pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. More than 130 outstanding works from all creative phases allow us to immerse ourselves in the colourful and multifaceted oeuvre of this remarkable artist.  

In the art of Irma Stern, motifs from her South African homeland meet the expressionism of the Brücke artists. In the interwar period she was celebrated in Berlin for her “exotic” paintings, and later became a prominent artist in South Africa. This richly illustrated volume focuses on her highly expressive portraits and addresses questions regarding the contexts in which the works were created and how they are seen today.  

The American artist Leon Kelly (1901–1982) is known for his surrealist work. However, his career, which spanned fifty years, was also influenced by cubism, abstraction and social realism. With handsome full-page reproductions, this volume provides a new look at the extensive oeuvre of a fascinating artist with an innately reclusive nature.

The Expressionist and “Brücke” artist Max Pechstein was a pioneering representative of modernism in Germany. His intensely colourful depictions of people and nature are regarded as foundational to Expressionism and were a defining inspiration for an entire epoch. This publication magnificently illustrates the diversity and depth of his oeuvre.