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Expressionism – trauma and taboo. New art for a new society

Exhibition November 11, 2017 − February 11, 2018
"We don't want to entertain the bourgeoisie. We want treacherously destroy them comfortable, solemn, sublime worldview," wrote Herwarth Walden in 1910 in the journal Der Sturm, which was the mouthpiece of expressionism. It was a Declaration of a new epoch of the war with the beliefs and values of old where art has become a battleground.

The exhibition "Expressionism – trauma and taboo. New art for a new society" Kunsthalle Bielefeld recalls the anti-bourgeois impulse that is inherent in many works of expressionist art. The once controversial work of supporters is now worth millions. They are considered only as examples of the picturesque eccentricity, color idylls, memories of the "good old days" and reliable investment method. Their rebellious spirit is endangered in complacency.

Young artists, poets, actors and dancers of the first years of the XX century – most of them were sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie – was considered a middle-class life traumatic. They rebelled against stringent standards and hypocritical conventions. Artists broke the taboo on drugs, put an end to bigotry, and rejection of the instinct to give his art the power of sexuality against repression and neurosis.

The exhibition presents about two hundred works of art including loaned from private collectors and such institutions as Deutsche Bank, State museums of Berlin, Kirchner Museum in Davos, the Kunsthalle Bremen, the Brücke Museum in Berlin and others.