November Group (German)

The November Group (German: Novembergruppe) was a group of German expressionist artists and architects. Formed on 3 December 1918, they took their name from the month of the German Revolution.

The group was led by Max Pechstein and César Klein. Linked less by their styles of art than by shared socialist values, the group campaigned for radical artists to have a greater say in such issues as the organisation of art schools, and new laws around the arts. The group merged in December 1918 with Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers Council of the arts – or 'The Art Soviet').

After its founding meeting on 3 December 1918 in Berlin, the Novembergruppe published an appeal in the Expressionist journal with the title Die schöne Rarität, which was also sent out as a circular letter to artists throughout Germany on 13 December 1918, soliciting further members.

The association's first office was located at 113 Potsdamer Strasse in Berlin (destroyed during the Second World War, level with today's No. 81). The house belonged to the art dealer and publisher Wolfgang Gurlitt. The artists and founding members César Klein and Max Pechstein in particular had been associated with the art dealer for some time.

In the first few months, 170 artists joined the newly founded Novembergruppe: 49 of them alone came from the editorial environment of Herwarth Walden's magazine Sturm. In the beginning, the artists' group was joined by Italian Futurists, important DADA artists as well as important Bauhaus members, some of whom belonged to the older Werkbund.

The artists of the November group described themselves as radical and revolutionary. Their work, like that of the similar Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art), aimed to support a socialist revolution in Germany. A key objective of the group was the union of art and the people. Furthermore, the group tried to influence public and cultural aspects of society.

In order to be entered in the register of associations, the association formulated the “representation and promotion of its artistic interests” as the purpose of its association in its statutes and gave itself an organisational form that endured with slight modifications in the following years. The executive committee consisted of a chairman, a secretary and a treasurer. The association had itself entered in the Berlin register of associations on 20 August 1920.

Characteristic of the artists of the November Group was a style syncretism that was often referred to as Cubofutoexpressionism. The neologism refers to Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism. The November Group was known for the diversity of its styles and disciplines, but is also criticised for this lack of uniformity and the resulting difficulty in classifying them stylistically. This diversity ranged from Expressionism and Cubism to Constructivism and represented “a middle ground between visionary and lyrical expressivity, constructive pictorial organisation and a sensitive and milieu-oriented objectivity.”