Carl Einstein. A Defense of the Real

Einstein is emerging ever more clearly as one of the most representative and complex figures in the commitments of European artists and intellectuals between the First World War, revolution, avant-garde art, the Spanish Civil War and National Socialism. With his books "Negro Sculpture" (1915) and "African Sculpture" (1921) he opened up the view of the "reality" and "intensity" of this art. He co-edited various journals (incl. Die Pleite), collaborated with G. Grosz and J. Heartfield, wrote a very successful "Art of the 20th Century" and a first monograph on Georges Braque. In Paris he published, with G. Bataille, "Documents" (1929). In an intellectual biography in which an epoch is portrayed, the American philosopher David Quigley maps out the Einstein's various stages and positions in the territory of the political, philosophical and aesthetic arguments for a "new" art and a "new" society.