On account of a technological and material deployment beyond all human scope, the First World War ranks as the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century but the worlds that collapsed in 1914 had already become fragile in the years before; a number of writers, musicians and artists had long since become weary of these worlds and many positively celebrated the outbreak of hostilities. The exhibition in the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn does not merely gather the known sources and protagonists, but goes that decisive step further by examining the processes of
transmission between the international art movements of the time. How were the artists of the avant garde moulded or even deformed by the experience? How did
they become the starting point for a completely new selfidentity in art? What are the historical preconditions for Expressionism, Cubism,? Including artworks, photographs, and personal testimonies from Baldessari, Beckmann, Carrà, Corinth, Delaunay, Dix, Dufy, Grosz, Kandinsky, Kirchner, Klee, Kokoschka, Léger, Malevich, Marc, Nolde, Picabia, Picasso, Schiele, Valloton, and Zadkine.