Advancing American Art and Intercultural Confrontations in Germany, 1945–1948
This article critically addresses the multivalent function of American art exhibitions in the period of de-Nazification and re-democratization. What kind of cultural and political parameters shaped the perception of American Art in Germany during the early post-war years? I investigate intercultural confrontations surrounding the project of advancing American art and the critical response of German audiences by first looking at the exhibition Advancing American Art from 1947. I then analyze the role of the transatlantic cultural mediator Hilla von Rebay to understand developments in the German perspective on American art. The German-born artist von Rebay emigrated in 1927 to the United States and organized the German tour of Zeitgenössische Kunst und Kunstpflege in U.S.A. (Contemporary Art and the Promotion of Arts in the U.S.A.) authorized by the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) in 1948. The project of ‘advancing American art’ resembles a struggle with many setbacks due to lack of official support and finding a larger public in the early years after World War II.