deaccessioned

Via Hyperallergic, we learn that the Victoria and Albert Museum recently published the sole known complete copy of the catalogue inventorying of the works of art and the artists considered degenerate (entartete) by the Nazi regime’s Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, which meticulously catalogued of sixteen thousand works in 1942 as a final record after the sale and disposals of the confiscated works.
There’s no comprehensive gallery of the pieces, many of which leave no trace afterwards (and many others that were thought lost to history until the trove of paintings was found in a Munich apartment of the son of one of the curators whose name pops up again and again), but with a little triangulation and desire to further the story of these ostracised objects and their blacklisted creators, like the author, one can access a Berlin reference library’s database and enter the catalogue numbers to retrieve a record. You should research and champion one of these once rejected pieces of art yourself, like this 1912 woodcut by Franz Marc (EN/DE) of Springing Horses, Entartete Kunst (EK) number 1847. A founding member of the German Expressionism movement and contributor to the influential art journal Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Knight) at the turn of the century, the iconic artist died in the Battle of Verdun in 1916 at age thirty-six but having already produced a body of nearly a thousand prints. A 1936 exhibition marking twenty years since the artist’s passing attracted negative attention and were declared subversive with the Gestapo seizing works from public and private collections around Germany and selling them to buyers abroad.