Should a painting by a Nazi still hang in a prominent gallery?

The artist Adolf Ziegler was favoured by Hitler and condemned modernist works as ‘degenerative’, writes William Cook. Does it serve a purpose for Ziegler’s own painting to hang alongside those very artworks he despised?

‘The Four Elements’ by Adolf Ziegler hangs alongside the works he called degenerative (Sibylle Forster/Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen )

In the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich’s sleek museum of modern art, hangs a painting that still sparks fierce controversy nearly a century after it was painted. One of Germany’s leading painters, Georg Baselitz (whose work also hangs here in the Pinakothek), called this picture “insulting to its surroundings”. So what is it about this triptych that inspires such outrage? The answer lies in its origins, during the dark days of the Third Reich.

Ostensibly, The Four Elements seems like an improbable focus for such opprobrium. It’s a figurative painting of four female nudes – a familiar topic throughout the ages. Viewed in isolation, it’s hard to see what the fuss is all about. Traditional and tasteful, there’s nothing overtly shocking about it. Indeed, the main thing that strikes you is that it’s rather stuffy and old-fashioned. Despite its nakedness, it’s not at all salacious. The painter has preserved these maidens’ modesty.

Yet when you take a closer look, you realise something’s not quite right. These women seem strangely sexless, more anatomical than sensual. There’s a coldness about this picture, an emptiness, a preoccupation with photographic realism. It’s devoid of emotion – it’s bereft of love.