Faces of the City
New Objectivity in the 1920s

The early years of the fledgling democracy of the Weimar Republic were marked by crises and uprisings. Not until 1924 was there a period of relative stability. From the early 1920s, a style of response to life’s often harsh realities evolved among a loose-knit group of artists in Germany. This soon became known as New Objectivity.

Its proponents were not united by any kind of manifesto. They simply took their cue from the visible world, casting aside both expressionism with its formal disarray and Dada with its anti-bourgeois stance. Paintings in the style of New Objectivity display a wide range of personal styles. People and objects seem isolated within their setting. These sober compositions have a clear pictorial structure. Depictions of individuals, objects and spaces are factually precise, yet often symbolically encoded.