ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to explore how the London exhibition was indeed interpreted in the days following its opening. After months of work, gathering exhibits from collections across Europe, the London exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art finally opened in the first week of July 1938. In Britain's specialist arts periodicals, it seems Mortimer's aesthetic judgements of Twentieth Century German Art were to some extent shared. The British press responses to the London exhibition also make clear that the show was not reliant on a successful defence of German modernism to stand as a public statement against National Socialist cultural policies. The local reception of Twentieth Century German Art clearly indicates, however, that in the summer of 1938 the British public were interested in the country's modernist output. Raymond Mortimer's appraisal of Twentieth Century German Art was clearly not representative of the British response to the show. In Germany, the show made a considerable impact.
