NOVEMBERGRUPPE.
Publié le 22/02/2012
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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.