Paris Magnétique

1905–1940

In the first half of the twentieth century, the French capital was a magnet for artists from around the world. With Paris Magnétique. 1905–1940, the Jewish Museum Berlin presented the first major exhibition in Germany devoted to the Jewish artists of the School of Paris. Featuring more than 120 works in ten sections, the exhibition charted how migrant, often marginalized perspectives from the Parisian avant-garde have influenced today’s understanding of Western modernist art. On show were works by famous and less-well-known artists, including Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Chana Orloff, Sonia Delaunay and Jacques Lipchitz.

Past exhibition

Map with all buildings that belong to the Jewish Museum Berlin. The Old Building is marked in green

Where

Old Building, level 1
Lindenstraße 9–14, 10969 Berlin

Where, when, what?

All offers for the exhibition

Alongside numerous paintings, the JMB presented sculptures and drawings. Contemporary documents, including photographs, newspaper excerpts, and film clips, illustrated the historical context. Biographies of the artists and descriptions of their networks and meeting places, such as Montparnasse and the artists’ residence La Ruche (The Beehive), provided a vivid impression of Jewish-European diversity in the French capital.

The term School of Paris (École de Paris) describes neither an art school nor a stylistic movement. Coined in 1925 by the journalist and art critic André Warnod, it refers to a cosmopolitan art scene that stood up to nationalist and xenophobic voices. Its members came to Paris from the former Russian Empire, that is, from Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus, as well as from Germany and Italy, to find a new, free environment for their work. Some of them shared ideals, but above all they wanted to escape the poor living conditions in their countries of origin, where they had faced marginalization and discrimination, culminating in pogroms.

The Berlin presentation was a continuation of the exhibition Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine... Paris as a School, 1905–1940, which was shown in Paris at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme (Museum of Jewish Art and History) from June to October 2021.