Our Heritage From Artists in Exile

The rise of German Nazism and its radically repressive cultural policies in the 1930s drove many premier artists, musicians, writers and philosophers out of Europe. A great number came to America, many to Southern California, where they vastly enriched our cultural landscape.

More than half a century later, Southern Californians are being presented a comprehensive exhibit of the lives of these artists, the circumstances of their exile and its effects on their work. The exhibit, which opens Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, should encourage interest in the issues of immigration and assimilation, a dialogue that would serve us well.

Entitled “Exiles and Emigres: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler,” the Frank O. Gehry-designed exhibit explores the artists’ relationship with their adopted home and analyzes the exile-related aspects of their works and activities.

Paintings, photographs, architectural reconstructions, historical posters, books, letters and journals on view at LACMA will include materials by Max Beckman, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Walter Gropius, Vasily Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka, Fernand Leger, Jacques Lipchitz, Matta, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, Yves Tanguy and others.

Running parallel to the LACMA exhibit is a citywide program of related events. Included are a representation of a German political cabaret featuring the texts and songs of Bertold Brecht, Friedrich Hollaender and others. Additional presentations include lectures, symposiums, panel discussions, multidisciplinary presentations, films and music.

Stephanie Barron, the show’s curator, picks up the theme of art in Nazi Germany where she left it a few years back with her landmark LACMA exhibit, “Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany.”

There have been many waves of immigration to America and Southern California. The one illustrated by this exhibit has special historical significance and, like all the others, has given our communities an understanding that stretches beyond borders. The LACMA show is life and art, under one roof.