NOVEMBERGRUPPE.

Aroused by the November Revolution* and concerned with publicizing their ideas, several architects, artists, writers, critics, and musicians formed the Novembergruppe on 3 December 1918. Led initially by Max Pechstein and Ce´sar Klein (both painters), the group invited ‘‘Expressionists, Cubists, Futurists'' to produce a new art for a new time. Many members were also associated with the Arbeitsrat fu¨r Kunst.* In all, more than forty artists and architects exhibited under the auspices of the Novembergruppe in its first year; Ludwig Mies,* head of its architectural section, arranged several exhibits of advanced architectural concepts. As with other groups of socially conscious intellectuals—for example, the Bauhaus*—the Novembergruppe initially clamored for the production of art with a social and political message. The Novembergruppe's political commitment soon eroded, and dissension formed within its ranks. Early members such as the artists Georg Scholz, George Grosz,* and Rudolf Schlichter (all diffident Communists), judging the Novembergruppe vague and moderate, attacked its leadership as bourgeois and overly committed to exhibitions. When it endorsed the Prussian government's 1921 decision to ban the work of Otto Dix* and Schlichter from a Berlin* exhibition, several Communists migrated to the loosely organized Rote Gruppe. By 1925 the Novembergruppe, although it continued to exhibit until 1932, was little more than a body devoted to exhibitions and marketing.