Look at The People!

The New Objectivity “Type” Portrait in the Weimar Period

The exhibition makes a detailed investigation of the “type” portrait in the historical context of the Weimar Republic (1918–1933). In it, numerous portraits by artists such as Otto Dix, George Grosz, Jeanne Mammen, and Hanna Nagel foreground the particular social “type” that in their view the depicted person represented. The portrayals were largely influenced by a debate that was pervasive in the Weimar period: the search for the “Face of the Era.” New role models were generated for a population in crisis, and it is precisely such role models of the 1920s that the exhibition examines in all their complexity. In the process, it becomes clear that many of the clichéd notions of the time continue to have an effect today. This also applies to the stereotypical classification of individuals.

An exhibition of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart in cooperation with the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz – Museum Gunzenhauser