 Nude statues of the ideal female and male bodies, installed in the streets of Berlin on the occasion of the 1936 Summer Olympics. Berlin won the bid in April 1931, two years before the NSDAP came to power. It was the last time ever that the International Olympic Committee gathered to vote in a city bidding as the host. | |
| Years active | 1933–1945 |
|---|---|
| Location | Germany |
| Major figures | Josef Thorak and Arno Breker, and painters Werner Peiner, Arthur Kampf, Adolf Wissel and Conrad Hommel. |
| Influences | Classicism, Romanticism, Heroic Realism |
The Nazi regime in Germany actively promoted and censored forms of art between 1933 and 1945. Upon becoming dictator in 1933, Adolf Hitler gave his personal artistic preference the force of law to a degree rarely known before. In the case of Germany, the model was to be classical Greek and Roman art, seen by Hitler as an art whose exterior form embodied an inner racial ideal.[1] It was, furthermore, to be comprehensible to the average man.[2] This art was to be both heroic and romantic.[2] The Nazis viewed the culture of the Weimar period with disgust. Their response stemmed partly from conservative aesthetics and partly from their determination to use culture as propaganda.[3]