Thirty Years War

Thirty-three years ago three young German painters living in Dresden kicked over academic traces and struck out for themselves. They shared studio, brushes, paint and their models. They exhibited their work, unsigned, together. They shared the subsequent outcry when the distorted figures and "unnatural" color of their painting shocked Germany. The boldest of them was irascible, 25-year-old Ernst Kirchner, who had been inspired by primitive art he had seen at the Dresden Ethnological Museum. Before the group broke up in 1913, its name, Die Bruecke (The Bridge), had become famous, it had been joined by some of Germany's most promising younger artists, and it was credited by art historians with having founded the movement known as German expressionism.

Last week in London memories of that period were powerfully stirred by an exhibition of 20th Century German Art held at the New Burlington Galleries. Most of the recollections were melancholy. For at the gallery was plain evidence that modern German art has traced a more tragic course than that of any other European country. Still living in Berlin slums. Kaethe Kollwitz reached her 71st birthday as the show opened, remained the best German woman artist. Also shown was the work of mild, good-natured Max Liebermann, who died three years ago after his work was banned, not because it was abstract, but because he was Jewish. Franz Marc, represented by his famed Blue Horse, considered by many a critic the most brilliant of German moderns, was killed at Verdun in 1916, not before he had turned out vivid abstractions that run counter to Hitler's esthetic creed. But the casualties of war and poverty were dwarfed by the exiles represented: Abstractionist Paul Klee, Satirist George Grosz, Lyonel Feininger, who became a champion bicycle racer before he became one of the leading German cubists. For the London show, Austrian-born Oskar Kokoschka sent a wry Self-Portrait of a Degenerate Artist. A second canvas arrived in four pieces, hacked by Vienna police when Nazis seized Austria. Symbolizing the end of a chapter in German art more poignantly than any exhibition, Founder Ernst Kirchner died of tuberculosis in Davos, Switzerland, as the London Exhibition of 20th Century German Art was being assembled for its opening.

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