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Max Pechstein, Head of a Girl, 1910, Oil on canvas. Smart Museum of Art, the University of Chicago. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Randall Shapiro, 1992.19. Public domain.
Past

Confronting Identities in German Art: Myths, Reactions, Reflections

October 3, 2002 – January 5, 2003

Drawing on the museum’s rich holdings of German art and a number of important loans, this exhibition examined how artists and artworks defined or responded to individual, social and national identities over the course of the last two centuries.

A chronological presentation framed several critical themes, including the relationship between portraiture and fantasy, the place of war as both idealized continuity and rupture, the city as a site of carnivalesque inversions, and the ongoing effort to identify how German art might look. Works by Max Klinger, Emil Nolde, Gabriele Münter, Max Beckman, Käthe Kollowitz, Erich Hechel, Joseph Beuys, Gerog Baselitz, and a group of contemporary artists from the former East Germany were among the highlights.

Catalog

Confronting Identities in German Art: Myths, Reactions, Reflections | Published October 2002 via the University of Chicago Press

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Curator
Reinhold Heller, University of Chicago Professor of Art History and Germanic Studies, in collaboration with Elizabeth Rodini, Smart Mellon Projects Curator.
Support

This exhibition and related programs were made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Smart Family Foundation; the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation; the Eloise W. Martin Fund; the Rhoades Foundation; the German Consulate General; Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes Chicago; the Office of the Provost, the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of German Literature and Culture, and Franke Institute for the Humanities, and the Department of Art History, University of Chicago.

Presented in the Richard and Mary L. Gray Special Exhibition Gallery
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