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The article examines the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) in photography, in its narrower sense defining it as the detailed or close description of the surfaces of material objects. The article looks also at the role of the New Objectivity in German art and photography and examines it in relation to pictorialism and the Czech avant-garde (Devětsil). It discusses the work that the pioneer of avant-garde photography Jaromír Funke produced in the years between 1923 and 1929, which originated some of the principles of the New Objectivity. In the 1920s Funke invented also non-figurative shadow play. In the style of New Objectivity he taught his students in the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research of modern realisms, including the New Objectivity, rehabilitated or even discovered many artists whose work did not fit into the dominant canon of modernism built on formal experiments, abstraction, and/ or iconoclasm. It is significant that the new realisms of the 1920s and 1930s included many women artists who considered radical avant-garde postulates too separated from life (and who were usually not welcome in avantgarde circles anyway). Analysing both the representation of femininity in inter-war visual culture and the work of several women artists who were either part of the inter-war Czech art scene (Milada Marešová, Vlasta Vostřebalová Fischerová) or were born in Bohemia but spent most of their professional lives in some neighbouring and in most cases German location (Erika Streit, Tina Bauer Pezellen), this text tries to find answers to some key questions connected with gender aspects of new realisms and the New Objectivity in particular: Why did women lean so frequently towards modern realisms? Did these fine art tendencies offer adequate means with which to express the long-suppressed and unreflected bodily and mental experiences of the ‘second’ sex and to find the personal and collective identity of women in modern society? Does a link exist between the New Objectivity and the ideal of a ‘new’ or ‘civilised’ woman that was one of the central icons of the 1920s? Can the gender perspective contribute to the gradual rehabilitation of figurative and realist tendencies in Czech inter-war modernism? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their writings on Zdenek Rykr, Jindřich Chalupecký and Vojtěch Lahoda use the term New Objectivity in reference to several of his paintings from 1928 and 1929. This article examines Rykr’s writings from that time in an effort to test the hypothesis of whether his paintings are a conscious reflection of the New Objectivity. That he may have been influenced by the New Objectivity has suggested itself given that he took part in a trip a group of journalists made to Germany in 1928 to attend the international Press Exhibition in Cologne. In his report from the exhibition, however, no mention is made of the New Objectivity, nor can any kind of mention be found in his other writings from this period. Rykr at this time related only to the French tradition of art. As regards Rykr’s relationship to the New Objectivity, it is genuinely a matter of only a similarity on the surface and the use of a similar visual language. However, an interesting parallel with his paintings can be found in the work of the Hannover group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text maps the areas of influence of the New Objectivity art to the Slovak fine art of the twenties and thirties of the 20th century. It is based on the knowledge that the most striking response to the Slovak art was left by drawing and graphic art of the Verist (“left”) wing of the New Objectivity, particularly by George Grosz and Otto Dix. Georges Grosz’s views were followed by communist-oriented intelligence and reproduced in left-wing cultural periodicals. The text proves that the sharp social criticism of the Groszian and Dixian types left traces in the painting and graphics of many Slovak modernists (Cyprián Majerník, Konstantin Bauer, Koloman Sokol and Štefan Bednár). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks for links between the Italian movement Valori Plastici and the German New Objectivity in the first half of the 1920s. The Valori Plastici movement was centred on a journal of the same name that was published in Rome in 1918-1922 and was a platform for metaphysical paintings and later a wider circle of classicist techniques. Members include painters Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà, and Alberto Savinio, who in the periodical’s first issues advanced a concept of metaphysical painting. German artists had the opportunity to get acquainted with the periodical at the art gallery and bookstore of Hans Goltz in Munich, and metaphysical painting was also often reported on in German journals such as Das Kunstblatt, Der Ararat, Der Cicerone and others. Confirmation of the interest in Italian art was the exhibition Das junge Italien, which was held in 1921 in Berlin, before it continued on to Hannover. These impulses did not fail to prompt a response in German art and we can find motifs inspired by metaphysical painting in the work of a number of artists (Ernst, Schlemmer, Grosz, Schrimpf, Darvinghausen, Mense, Kanoldt). The role of the Valori Plastici movement was assessed by Franz Roh in his book Nach-Expressionismus - Magischer Realismus - Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei from 1925. Not only did he acknowledge the importance of the Valori Plastici movement, but in his description of the new art of the 1920s he delineated principles similar to those set forth also by the authors of metaphysical painting. It appears that the relatedness or similarity of views between Valori Plastici and the New Objectivity, alternatively magical realism, should not be sought in the work itself, where it was more obvious, but in the theoretical reflections that characterised the new approaches to art in the early 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Modern realist work in interwar Czechoslovakia has not yet been thoroughly analysed, in contrast to current research on the German and American scenes. In those countries there has been a recent revival of interest in not just the New Objectivity but also modern realism in its wider sense. A project titled New Realisms in the Czechoslovak Art Scene 1918-1945 seeks to fill this gap. This article tries to understand what has led to the current state of affairs and to formulate the boundaries and premises a complex analysis of this subject would be based on. It is conceived as a summary of the starting points from which to proceed to gain insight into the new realisms, one particular example of which is represented by the New Objectivity. It also focuses on the response to the New Objectivity in Czech art history and questions of defining the new realisms in the specific circumstances of interwar Czechoslovakia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the conference of The New Objectivity in Czechoslovakia? held on May 25, 2017 at the department of art history, faculty of arts, Msaryk University, Czech Republic. It mentions the conference focuses project titled The New Realisms in the Czechoslovak Art Scene 1918–1945, supported by the Czech Science Foundation; modern realisms research in Czechoslovakia's interwar art scene; and methods developed in international research on the New Objectivity.

The article focuses on a painting called Maria en den Ruinen, which was painted by a captured German soldier Arthur Braun. Arthur painted the work at the prisoner of war camp in Castleford, Yorkshire in 1946. Braun had learnt 'new objectivity' or neue Sachlichkeit before the war. The painting depicts the phase of a tragic period in the artist's life. Materials used by Arthur for making the painting included bitumen, powder paints made with linseed oil and bed sheet as a canvas. In the painting, mental imagery is related to both post-traumatic shock and grief.