More about the exhibition

The title – The mad square – is drawn directly from Felix Nussbaum’s 1931 painting, included in this exhibition, depicting Berlin’s famous Pariser Platz as a crazy and fantastic place. The ‘mad square’ is both a place – the city, represented in so many works in the exhibition – and a state of mind that gives these works their edginess. The ‘square’ can also be seen as a modernist construct that saw artists moving away from figurative representations towards increasingly abstract forms.

Explore the themes in the exhibition online.

- Expressionism in Berlin
  
  The starting point of the exhibition is Berlin in the heady years leading up to World War I when artists ...
- WWI and the revolution
  
  The artists who experienced war first-hand turned away from the bright sunlight of many prewar landscapes toward the representation of ...
- Dada
  
  Though the Dada movement in Germany was short-lived, it has profoundly influenced subsequent developments in avant-garde art and culture.
- Bauhaus
  
  Founded in Germany, Bauhaus is widely considered the most important school of art and design of the 20th century.
- Constructivism
  
  Having emerged in Russia after World War I, Constructivism fused art with technology in response to the age of the ...
- Metropolis
  
  The metropolis of Berlin became the cultural and entertainment capital of the world, providing a rich source of imagery for ...
- New Objectivity
  
  By the mid 1920s a new style emerged that came to be known as Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity.
- Power and 'degenerate' art
  
  As the Nazis increased their power and launched their brutal campaign against modernism, artists realised their situation was becoming increasingly ...