New Objectivity

Related Category: European Art, 1600 to the Present

(Ger. Neue Sachlichkeit), German art movement of the 1920s. The chief painters of the movement were George Grosz and Otto Dix, who were sometimes called verists. They created styles of bitter realism and protest that mirrored the disillusionment following World War I. New objectivity retained the intense emotionality of earlier movements in German art (see Brücke and Blaue Reiter), but it abandoned the symbolism of expressionism for direct social commentary. Max Beckmann produced works in a related, though more philosophical, vein.