Could a Nazi Exhibition on Degenerate Art Have Provided Inspiration to Charlotte Salomon?

In 1937, the Nazis mounted an exhibition of Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) in Munich. The exhibition featured over 650 modernist paintings, sculptures, prints, and books which had been confiscated from public museums throughout Germany. Included were works by Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Piet Mondrian, among others. They were crudely hung and accompanied by derisive labels and graffiti like: "Revelation of the Jewish racial soul" and "The Jewish longing for the wilderness reveals itself."

As Nazi propaganda, the exhibition was meant to mock modernism and expose a Jewish "corruption of art." Over 3 million attended the exhibition which traveled to 11 cities in Germany and Austria.

In the spring of 1938, it traveled to Berlin where Charlotte Salomon attended, according to her biographer Mary Felsteiner in To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era. Could she have found inspiration behind the hatred? And how many of those who attended the exhibition might have been like Salomon—artists who came to see and appreciate the works on display? We'll likely never know, but this footage from the Holocaust Museum gives you a look inside Entartete Kunst.

Watch the footage from the exhibition »