Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33

Brilliant exhibition at Tate Modern looking at German art from the end of the First World War to the rise of Hitler.

 
The show started with a good timeline of the art and politics of the time which was a good grounding for the show. The show was them arranged by theme. The first room contrasted those artists who looked at everyday life through precise observation and those who employed satire and the grotesque. In particular it looked at how this came out through the theme of circus.

I loved the room of portraits with pictures of artists’ studios on wall and wonderful run of portraits on the other. It was like looking at the faces of the time and being part of an exciting party. You then moved into the real party in the next room which looked at cabaret and talking about how the clubs were a very equal space and a place where women could visit unchaperoned.

The last room looked at religion and how some of the experiences of the artists who had fought in the First World War fed into these. I loved Herbert Gurscher’s Annunciation, a modern take on a Renaissance fresco.


 
Closes in Jul 2019.
 
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