The upheaval that culminated in Modernism and the beginnings of Die Neue Sammlung, Germany’s first state design museum, are closely connected. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of its foundation, a joint exhibition by the four museums that form the Pinakothek der Moderne will showcase a selection of highlights of Modernism from the museum collections. The era will be presented from the 1910s to the 1930s, and across the different artistic and design disciplines.

In times of great political instability and rapid social and technological change, one of the most important aesthetic epochs gained sway. With its radical form of abstraction and unadorned realism, artistic and functional matter-of-factness, artisanal and exclusive design, it emphatically changed our view of humans and the world.

Modernism is presented in four thematic areas from the perspectives of the various museum collections:

New Aesthetics focuses on abstraction and New Objectivity. The departure from traditional design methods is reflected in geometric forms in the plane and in space, such as in the painting by Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, in a closet by Marcel Breuer or in the spherical house by Peter Birkenholz.

New Materials and Techniques deals with architecture made of iron and steel and furniture made of tubular steel and aluminum as well as products made of new plastics like Bakelite. Electrified devices illustrate technical innovations and the belief in “progress through technology”, which is also evident in the advertising graphics of A. M. Cassandre or the collotype prints of Man Ray.

New Institutions are shown as training centers, clients and presentation venues that have made a significant contribution to the development and dissemination of Modernism. In addition to reform schools like the Bauhaus and the Burg Giebichenstein School of Arts and Crafts it encompasses the post office buildings in Munich by Robert Vorhoelzer and the Stuttgarter Tagblatt publishing house by Ernst Otto Oßwald.

The New Society section is dedicated to people. After World War I the avant-garde saw the possibility of a fundamental transformation of the world through the ideal of a new man and a new society. The government of the Weimar Republic paved the way for social building projects.

The Cripple Portfolio by Heinrich Hoerle, portraits by August Sander and Max Beckmann or the depictions of women by Karl Hubbuch and George Grosz show images of people caught between disillusionment and new beginnings. In Germany, the Nazi state marked a caesura for the free development of Modernism, whose representatives were instrumentalized, persecuted, or murdered.

Diverse connections between the individual collections of art, graphics, architecture, and design, which also feature works by the same artists, become visible. These include works by Jankel Adler, Ernst Barlach, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, J. J. P. Oud, Oskar Schlemmer, or Johanna Schütz-Wolff.

The exhibition architecture by Martin Kinzlmaier in the form of a 4 refers to the four museums in the Pinakothek der Moderne as well as to the four thematic areas of the exhibition.