13 March 2009, the exhibition, dedicated to the history of the first collection of modern European Art, brought to the Soviet Russia after the Revolution, was opened in the Twelve Column Hall of the New Hermitage. The exposition, which represents about 170 graphic arts, is prepared by the State Hermitage Museum together with the Scholarly Research Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts and the Library of the Russian Academy of Arts.

The Cooperative for the Proletarian Art (Genossenschaft für proletarische Kunst), founded in Berlin in 1920, consolidated the goals of the business venture, that was in fact the cooperative, which united artists, who jointly dealt their works of art, and was also an organization of strictly social and political character. Among the members of the Genossenschaft were already well-known masters of the German Expressionism - Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Mueller, Christian Rohlfs, as well as the artists of the new generation, whose artistic career started after the end of the First World War. Among them are the Berliners George Grosz, Ludwig Meidner, Max Kaus, Erich Godal, Conrad Felixmuller and Walter Jacob from Dresden, Rudiger Berlit from Leipzig, Gustav Heinrich Wolf, Walter Gramatte and Karl Opfermann from Hamburg, Franz Seiwert from Cologne, Arnold Schmidt-Niechiol from Worswede, Max Burchartz and Reinhard Hilker from Hagen, Rudolf Hainisch from Frankfurt-on-Main and others. The variety of artists’ names represented in the collection is of great value, offering an overview of German art around 1920, encompassing different trends of  widely differing artistic and aesthetic merits.

The Genossenschaft presented the newest trends of the modern German art from jugendstyle (Siegfriend Behrend) and early Expressionists artists from the group Die Brücke (Schmidt-Rottluff, Heckel) to Dadaisme (George Grosz). Despite different artistic views all those artists were united for a short time by the idea of ‘proletarian’ art.

The founder of The Cooperative for Proletarian Art was Friedrich Wilhelm Brass. Brass was going to deal mostly inexpensive printed graphic arts, considerable part of which had political propagandistic character. However the lack of substantial financial means had great effect on Brass’s plans. The Genossenschaft didn’t have its own exhibition premises. Brass established The Genossenschaft publishing house but managed to publish just lithographs series Revolution by Erich Godal and portraits of Karl Liebknecht made by Arnold Schmidt-Niechiol. That venture existed for a short period of  time and was eliminated. All that the Genossenschaft owned was sold to Russia in October 1920.

The Exhibition in the Hermitage once again assembled works of art descended from Genossenschaft für proletarische Kunst and is aimed at attracting attention to this interesting episode of Russian-German artistic connections and to the artistic organization of Brass, forgotten even in Germany.

The exhibition curator is Mikhail Dedinkin, the Senior Researcher of the Western European Department of the State Hermitage Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue which includes an introductory by Prof. Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum. Mikhail Dedinkin is the author of the catalogue’s essay (Publishing House of the State Hermitage Museum). Exhibits were restored by the department of Scientific Restoration and Conservation of the State Hermitage Museum (the head of the department - Tatiana Baranova).

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Mikhail Dedinkin, Curator of the exhibition, and Vladimir Matveev, Deputy Director of the State Hermitage Museum, at the opening of the exhibition

At the exhibition. Xylographs by Rudiger Berlit

Lithographs by Rudolf Hainisch

Catalogue of the exhibition

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