degenerate art

Culturally debased works

Degenerate art translates the German *entartete Kunst*, a Nazi term for modern art that violated their ideological standards—work deemed Jewish, Bolshevik, or racially impure.

The Nazis mounted a 1937 exhibition of such art to mock it, featuring expressionism, cubism, and abstraction.

The term now appears mainly in historical contexts discussing Nazi cultural policy and censorship.

Third ReichHitler's totalitarian German state
Nazi propagandaGerman fascist state messaging
racial purityIdeology of ethnic exclusivity
Jewish artistsMakers sharing Judaic heritage
BauhausInfluential modernist design school

Cubism · anti-modernism · censorship · Dadaism · book burnings · totalitarianism · Surrealism · fascism · nationalism · Weimar Republic · eugenics · Futurism · avant garde · traditionalism · moral decay · World War II · historical trauma · cultural hegemony

Opposites

Nazi ideological approval

degenerate artNazi art

Works sanctioned by fascists

aesthetic traditionalism vs. modernism

degenerate artclassical art

Ancient Greek and Roman works

traditional art · neoclassicism · beaux-arts · realist art · figurative art

moral-cultural valuation

degenerate arthigh art

Culturally elevated creative works

Family

degenerate, degeneracy, degeneration, degenerative, art, arts, artful, artfully, artless

Familiarity: Top 500,000
Profile: Used worldwide · Timeless · Negative · Rated PG