Symposium 75/20 Day 2: Panel discussion "Exile and Return of the Avantgarde 1937 – 1955"

Reconstruction of the Postwar-Museum

The panel examines the fate of the European avant-garde between 1937 and 1955: from its ostracism and expulsion by National Socialist art policy, to its existence in exile and, finally, its return and rehabilitation during the postwar period. The discussion focuses on the vilifying exhibition "Degenerate Art", staged in 1937, the Paris World's Fair of the same year, and the first documenta in 1955 in Kassel, with which Arnold Bode strived to launch an intellectual and moral new beginning in a society that was in the midst of transforming itself from a dictatorship to a democracy. 

Moderator: Okwui Enwezor Participants: Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Karen Fiss, Walter Grasskamp