Page 42 - EXPOTIME!Sept2017

New exhibitions

Manifest Vive l’art dégénéré (A cheer for degenerate art), 1938, paper.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Archive, Edinburgh

with its intimate amalgamation of poetry and painting, project "museum global" (2015-2018), which investigates
stood firm against political repression and for the ideal manifestations of non-Western modern art on various
of human freedom. With loans of more than 200 works continents. The artist's network F.I.A.R.I. (Féderation
from approximately 50 collections in 12 different coun- Internationale d’un Art Révolutionnaire Indépendant),
tries, among them paintings, prints, photographs, films, closely linked to Surrealism, formed after the meeting
books, and documents, the exhibition will be on view at between André Breton and Leo Trotsky in 1938 and with
the K20 until October 15, 2017. branches from New York to Santiago de Chile and Marti-
nique, demonstrates how Surrealism as the first tenden-
The exhibition ‒ conceived by guest curators Sam Bardaouil cy of modernism exerted an international influence far
and Till Fellrath ‒ is linked directly to the Kunstsammlu- beyond Paris and Europe. The "Art et Liberté" group in
ng Nordrhein-Westfalen: the Egyptian artist's collective Cairo had a strong affiliation with the F.I.A.R.I. A number
expressed solidarity with many of the artists who were of Art et Liberté members´ writings were published in
persecuted by Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco, and who the F.I.A.R.I.´s journal.
are also represented in the permanent collection of the
Kunstsammlung. With programmatic intent, and alluding With nine thematic foci, the exhibition present the po-
to the defamatory National Socialist propaganda exhibi- litical, aesthetic, and social engagement of the group
tion, the international membership of the Art et Liberté Art et Liberté (jama´at al-fann wa al-hurriyyah), whose
group headed its manifesto, dated December 1938 and one of the most driving forces was the Cairo-based poet
signed by 37 artists, writers, journalists, and lawyers, and literary critic Georges Henein (1914-1973). As early
with the words: "Long Live Degenerate Art." as 1930, Henein – the son of a diplomat and a cosmopol-
itan personality – had been closely associated with the
In their appeal, illustrated with a reproduction of Pi- Parisian Surrealists grouped around André Breton.
casso's Guernica, they issued the demand: "Together,
let us overcome the Middle Ages that emerges from the The presentation highlights the stand of this artist's group
heart of the Occident." The exhibition at the K20 also for a new Egyptian art and against academism and the
serves as a prologue to the extensive show Excentric linkage between nationalism and culture propagated by
Modernism (working title), planned for autumn of 2018 conservative forces at the Cairo School of Fine Arts. Be-
at the K20 in connection with the multiyear research fore long, the kingdom of Egypt – still dominated by Great

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EXPOTIME!, issue August/September 2017