In the sights! Lovis Corinth, the Nationalgalerie and the “Degenerate Art” campaign

From July 18 to November 2, 2025, the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin presents the exhibition “In the sights! Lovis Corinth, the Nationalgalerie and the ‘Degenerate Art’ campaign”

Source: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin · Image: Lovis Corinth: “Das Trojanische Pferd”, 1924

To mark the 100th anniversary of Lovis Corinth’s death, the Alte Nationalgalerie is holding a concentrated exhibition on the fate of the works of the artist and his wife, the painter Charlotte Berend-Corinth, in the collection of the Nationalgalerie. The exhibition focuses on the different provenances of the paintings: the Nationalgalerie’s holdings are supplemented by paintings that were taken to other museums as a result of the National Socialist “Degenerate Art” campaign and have now been temporarily returned especially for the exhibition.

Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) is considered, alongside Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt as the most important representatives of German Impressionism. With over twenty oil paintings, some of them large-format, the Nationalgalerie owns an extensive and important collection of works by the painter. The paths of these objects into the Nationalgalerie’s collection are, however often characterized by loss and partial return: some of the paintings were confiscated as “degenerate” in 1937, but were surprisingly returned in 1939, while others could only be reacquired much later. Some were not confiscated, while others were sold at the time and are now in Germany and abroad. To compensate for these losses, further paintings by Corinth and his wife Charlotte Berend-Corinth (1880-1967) were acquired in both the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR after 1945. Born in East Prussia, the artist moved from Munich to Berlin in 1901. to Berlin in 1901. After suffering a stroke in 1911, his brushwork became significantly more expressive. When he died of pneumonia on July 17, 1925 of pneumonia, he was on a trip to Amsterdam, where he once again to view the paintings of Frans Hals and Rembrandt.