The Metropolitan Life in German Artists’ Legacy of the Pre-war and Interwar Period

Abstract

Urban life became one of the dominant themes in Weimar art, as a city had been the main living space for a human of the XX century. Being one of the main centres of political and cultural life in Germany, Berlin cannot but attracted artists from all over the country. The article compares the peculiarities of perception of the metropolitan life by expressionists and the representatives of new objectivity. If for the expressionists it was important to look at urban environment in a new way, to reflect its vitalism and dynamism, the new objectivity artists sought to capture the facts of social reality, taking a sober look at the surrounding environment and revealing its most unattractive features. Nevertheless, both movements contributed to the development of new vision of city space, having produced thousands of works devoted to urban issues.