Exiles and Emigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler

June 19 to September 7, 1997

	Poster of the exhibition

Exiles and Emigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler traced the fate of creators during the Nazi period in Germany, from Hitler's rise to power in 1933 until the fall of the Reich in 1945.

It may be difficult for us to conceive how the victory of a political party could induce artists to voluntarily leave their country or even force them into exile. Yet, this is what happened as the result of the policies Hitler initiated in 1933 to purge Germany of undesirables: non-Aryans (which meant Jews) and all "enemies of the state" — Communists, homosexuals, intellectuals, progressives. In the regime's early months, book burnings and the defining of a national art to exclude all work that did not conform to official ideals clearly indicated the Nazis' intolerance towards modern literature and art.

Those whose names were on the black list, or liable to be added to it, had reason enough to leave. Four waves of refugees fled Germany and Central Europe in reaction to the escalating repression orchestrated by the Nazis: the burning of the Reichstag in March 1933; the "Night of the long knives" in June 1934, when the SS liquidated dissident military leaders; the anti-Semitic laws enacted in Nuremberg in November 1935; and the Kristallnacht pogrom and the signing of the Munich Pact, which provided for Germany's expansion to the east, both in November 1938.

The exhibition Exiles and Emigrés followed the journey of twenty-three artists and the effects of their exile. It dealt with three phases of the question: exile in Europe, emigration from Europe to America (1938-1945) and exile in the United States. The artworks produced in exile that made up the exhibition — along with historical documents, film clips, photographs and architectural models — revealed the political, social and cultural conditions affecting the artists who emigrated, at first within Europe and later to America.

The exhibition Exiles and Emigrés was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After closing in Montreal on September 7, it travelled to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

This exhibition was funded in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, die ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius, Helen and Peter Bing, the Righteous Persons Foundation, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Silent Foundation for the Arts. International passenger and cargo transportation was provided by Air Canada and Lufthansa German Airlines Canada. The exhibition received promotional support from La Presse and The Gazette .

The Montreal presentation of the exhibition was sponsored by First Marathon Securities Ltd.