On Saturday, 14 works by Adolf Hitler fetched $446,000 at auction in Nuremberg. The amount is considerable given Hitler's modest achievements as a painter.
One could view the pictures as memorabilia rather than art as such, and consider the buyers to be guilty of bad taste, if not worse. But I would argue that Germany needs to hunt down as many of these works as possible and exhibit them. Looking at them, and recalling their history, helps understand what happened to Germany, and the world, in the 1930s and 1940s.
It's customary for Hitler's artwork to be dismissed as inept (he was rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts). He was bad at rendering people, but he was fascinated with buildings, and at the second rejection, he was told to try his hand at architecture. Hitler proceeded to teach himself architectural drawing, and when he drew or painted buildings, he would often take liberties with their proportions and elements of decor.
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