“This first exhibition in France devoted to so-called “degenerate” art, explores and puts into perspective the Nazi regime's methodical attack on modern art. The exhibition title refers to the propaganda exhibition “Entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art), held in Munich under the Nazis in 1937. Over 600 works by a hundred artists, representing the different currents of modern art from including Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Vassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde, Marc Chagall, Picasso, Paul Klee and Max Beckmann, were exhibited in a staging designed to provoke the visitors’ disgust.

The Nazi campaign of exclusion and destruction of modern art began with Adolf Hitler's accession to power in 1933 and continued to the end of the Second World War in 1945. During this campaign, over 1,400 artists were insulted, vilified, dismissed from their teaching posts, banned from exhibiting and working, physically threatened or forced into exile.

The Picasso exhibition brings together an exceptional collection of works presented at the 1937 exhibition along with works of art confiscated from German museums during this campaign. A series of works are also dedicated to Jewish artists who were violently attacked: Jankel Adler, Ludwig Meidner, Hanns Katz and Otto Freundlich.