Berlin Secession: Avant-Garde Artists Group, Germany читать ~5 мин.

Berlin SecessionGerman Breakaway Artist Group under Max Liebermann. MAIN A-Z INDEX – A-Z of ART MOVEMENTS

Poster for the 1900 Exhibitionof the Berlin Secession.

ContentsSummary • Origins and History • Foundation • New Secession and Other Splits • Related Articles

For a general guide to the evolution of painting, sculpture andother artforms, see: History of Art (2.5 Million BCE -present).

The Parrot Man (1902) Folkwang Museum, Essen.By Max Liebermann, first Presidentof the Berlin Secession.

EVOLUTION OF VISUAL ARTFor details of art styles, see: History of Art Timeline.

Summary One of the last art movements of 19th century German art, the Berlin Secession (Sezession) was a breakaway group of artists who in 1898 ’seceded’ from the city’s arts establishment and, led by the eminent painter Max Liebermann, established an independent exhibition society, in order to champion new forms of modern art – rather than continue to churn out the old-fashioned academic art favoured by the Berlin Academy. This was the third major Sezession movement – the others being the Munich Secession (1892) and the Vienna Secession (1897) – after the initial breakaway in Paris (1890). The latter event occurred when the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (and its exhibition arm the Salon au Champs-de-Mars) was formed as a modern alternative to the official Société des Artistes Francais (and its Salon de Champs-Élysées). The term "Secession" was first coined by Georg Hirth, editor of the cultural magazine Jugend, which was instrumental in promoting Art Nouveau (also known as Jugendstil). These and other Secessionist artist groups rejected the official arts governing bodies due to the latter’s distaste for avant-garde art like Impressionism, forms of Post-Impressionist painting and Naturalism, as well as their restrictive exhibition policies, which tended to favour established painters and sculptors over their younger, more modernist colleagues. The Secessionist movement represented a direct challenge to the official academies of fine art, and to their royal patrons. The Berlin Secession, for instance, offered a modernist alternative to the conservative art championed by the Berlin Academy and its imperial patron Wilhelm II, which typically consisted of high-brow history painting, and traditional landscape painting, as well as monumental sculpture glorifying Germany and the Hohenzollern dynasty. Along with Max Liebermann (1847-1935), other members of the Berlin Secession included many of the city’s most talented modern artists, like the sculptors Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945) and Ernst Barlach (1870-1938), and and the painters Walter Leistikow (1865-1908), Max Klinger (1857-1920), Lovis Corinth (1858-1925), Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Emil Nolde (1867-1956) Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), Erich Heckel (1883-1970), Max Beckmann (1884-1950) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976).

Origins and History Berlin art was largely controlled by the official Academy of Arts – founded in 1696 by crown-prince Frederick III of Brandenburg, as an "Academy of Painterly, Sculptural and Architectural Art", and the official Association of Berlin Artists ( Verein Berliner Kunstler) – both of which were presided over by the Prussian painter Anton von Werner (1843-1915) – under the watchful eye of the German emperor Wilhelm II, whose conventional aesthetics led him to decorate the city with such monstrosities as the Neo-Roman Gedachtniskirche (Memorial Church, 1891)and the over-large Dom cathedral (1894-1905), as well as over 30 monumental sculptures along the Siegesallee, commemorating events from Prussian history. The highlight of the official arts calendar was the Great Exhibition of Berlin Art ( Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung) , which was organized by the Association of Berlin Artists.

During the run-up to Secession there were several controversies. In February 1892, a number of Berlin artists set up the "Free Association to Organize Artistic Exhibitions". Later, in November, an exhibition of paintings by Edvard Munch opened at the Berliner Architekturhaus. Visiting members of the Association of Berlin Artists were so shocked by Munch’s works that they closed the exhibition. In response, the modernist wing of the Association set up a new progressive exhibition body known as the Group of the Eleven, whose members included Walter Leistikow, Max Liebermann, Max Klinger and Ludwig von Hofmann. The struggle between Berlin conservatives (led by von Werner) and progressives (led by Liebermann and Leistikow) continued in the Academy and the Association for most of the 90s. Then, during the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung of 1898, a major scandal errupted when the German emperor Wilhelm II refused to approve prizes won by Kathe Kollwitz (on the grounds that she was a woman!) and Walter Leistikow (because he painted trees blue!).