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Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon By Watling, Lucy
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The Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon [First German Autumn Salon] was one of the most important large-scale international exhibitions of Modern art to be shown in Germany before World War I. Staged in derelict rooms on Berlin’s Potsdamer Strasse between 20 September and 1 December 1913, the exhibition included over 360 works by some 90 artists. It was organized by the Berlin writer and critic Herwarth Walden (1878–1941) under the banner of his Der Sturm Gallery, working in collaboration with a group of Expressionist artists including Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke and Franz Marc, known by their collective name Der Blaue Reiter. The exhibition’s title was taken from the Salon d’automne, an annual display of avant-garde art which had taken place in Paris since 1903. Many in Germany—in particular the Blaue Reiter artists—increasingly felt that the development of modern art was no longer being adequately represented by these Paris shows. As Walden wrote in his foreword to the catalogue, the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon sought to “give an overview of the new movements in the pictorial arts of all countries,” that would “at the same time…broaden our view of the contemporary.”