‘Beautifully designed and illustrated’ – RA Magazine

‘To open this book is to be plunged at once into a diorama of images … an invaluable sourcebook … a wonderful visual account of Munich’s art, architecture, graphic design and personalities.’ – History Today

Packed with evocative illustrations, this book is a dazzling kaleidoscope of a vibrant city at its cultural peak.

As the 20th century dawned, the city of Munich found itself at a high point in its cultural history. Capital of Bavaria, but often seen as provincial and parochial, it reinvented itself as a treasure house of art.

Its proud promotion of its own artists and thinkers created a cultural impetus that drew in creative minds from across Germany and beyond, turning the city into a magnet for the esoteric and the avant-garde.

Buzzing with a seething life of festivals and carnivals, theatres and cabarets, Munich became a haven and an inspiration to many: artists such as Paul Klee, Giorgio de Chirico and Marcel Duchamp, writers such as Thomas Mann and Stefan George, and political figures such as Lenin and Trotsky, spent time there.

A succession of movements and breakaway groups took the limelight, from the innovative Munich Secession to the bold colours and expressive harmonies of Der Blaue Reiter: Kandinsky, Marc and Macke. This was also the birthplace of Jugendstil, the German version of Art Nouveau. The work of designers such as Peter Behrens, Hermann Obrist and Richard Riemerschmid became the very embodiment of Jugendstil’s whiplash curves and elegant ornamentation.

Rainer Metzger is an art historian and writer as well as lecturer at the Kunstuniversität Linz, Stuttgart University, and the Academy of Art in Karlsruhe. His books include Gustav Klimt: Drawings and Watercolours and Berlin in the Twenties – Art and Culture 1918-1933, both published by Thames & Hudson.

Also of interest
Art Nouveau World of Art series
Kandinsky
Textiles of the Wiener Werkstätte 1910-1932
London in the Sixties