German Art

Exhibitions of German art are rarities outside of Germany , and German art with the exception of Sixteenth Century graphic art and the paintings of Holbein has not been represented with the same degree of authority in American museums and private collections as has been the case with the art of other European countries. This situation is due primarily to the fact that an interest in and appreciation of German art has only recently commenced manifesting itself. Curiously enough, Germany herself is partly responsible for this situation. It was not until the last decades of the Nineteenth Century that an adequate history of German art was written and not until the beginning of the Twentieth Century that an effort was made to understand the special problems of German form.

The acceptance of such a standard is essential if German art is to be understood and appreciated. German art is almost never "art for art's sake," but rather, art for the sake of a philosophy of life: an attitude which the Latin concept of art rejects. German artists are romantic, mystical, irrational. They are concerned with emotional, philosophical or scientific problems. An Albrecht Altdorfer expresses the German's mystic union with nature in his landscapes of the German forest; Albrecht Durer was interested in the world of science and metaphysics; and Caspar David Friedrich, in his "beseelte Landschaften" was an exponent of transcendental idealism.

The present exhibition makes no pretense at a complete representation of German art within the time limits and in the medium chosen. Not only are German paintings jealously guarded in German museums by statutes which make it exceedingly difficult to obtain loans for overseas exhibitions, but according to Wilhelm Pinder, the most characteristic expressions of German art are not to be found in museums, and least of all in pictures. The most characteristic German art served a communal purpose and was not designed only for individual enjoyment. It is to be found primarily in the graphic arts, in architecture, and in the sculpture which adorned the Gothic and Baroque churches and palaces.

Accepting Pinder's appraisal of what constitutes representative German art, the present exhibition may be said to fulfill the most exacting requirements in at least one characteristic expression of the German spirit, and that is in the collection of drawings. Most of the important artists who have made a significant contribution to the graphic tradition in Germany are included.