A joint research and exhibition project between the Center for Persecuted Arts and Documenta archive Kassel. Both institutions are watching critically in parallel with documenta 15 in 2022 and reflecting back on the beginnings of the major exhibition.

Some artists do it. They become known, museums collect their works and keep the memory of them alive. Some artists are only publicly present for a short time, others never. The selection of those who remain is influenced, among other things, by museums, the art market, galleries, collectors and art historiography. Their cooperation shapes the canon of art history.

For many artists, the implementation of National Socialist ideology after 1933 meant a serious break. Germany became a dictatorship responsible for millions of deaths, the Second World War and the Shoah. The Nazi regime persecuted numerous artists, confiscated their works in German museums and showed them at the degenerate art feme exhibition from 1937. Artists in particular, who were around 30 years old in 1933 and began to establish themselves, were hit hard by this persecution, because even after 1945, many were unable to build on their previous successes.

In a joint project with Documenta archive Kassel, the Center for Persecuted Arts asks itself what role the documenta and its founders played in the canonization processes of fine art in the post-war period. Die documenta 1955 was planned as a major European event that wanted to combine “contemporary art” with art before 1933. Did it live up to this requirement?

Arnold Bode was not only the initiator of documenta, but also artists, designers and active as a curator as early as the 1920s. His commitment allows us to compare two exhibitions for which he is co-responsible: The Fourth Great Art Exhibition Box Officel 1929 and the first documenta 1955.

30 artists from the Solingen Civic Foundation for Persecuted Arts — Else Lasker-Schüler Center — Gerhard Schneider Art Collection were represented in the 1929 exhibition — in 1955 there were only three. What happened to the remaining 27 artists?

Project website 29-55.de