The art of being a child

The curators of "Artists' Children: From Runge to Richter, from Dix to Picasso" at the Kunsthalle in Emden ask visitors to rethink their approach to their own childhood and children.

The 130 works on display are by 60 different artists ranging from early 19th century to the present. Many of the artworks were never intended to be sold or exhibited, and provide insight into artists' private, domestic lives and emotional states.

The exhibition also documents the impact of new media technologies such as photography and video on portraiture and depictions of children and childhood.

Click through the pages to view more images from the exhibition.

The art of propaganda

The German historical painter Arthur Kampf, born in 1864, studied at the Art Academy in Dusseldorf from 1879 to 1881. He later taught there as a professor before moving to Berlin in 1889.

Influenced by the work of Velazquez and a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, Kampf's paintings generally depict historical events and scenes of war and were used as propaganda for the Germans in both the First and Second World Wars. Kampf was even honored by Hitler and Goebbels on the "Gottbegnadeten Liste" or "God-gifted list" in 1944, a document naming 24 artists, writers, singers, actors, architects and composers as "national treasures" representative of Nazi culture.

His work was highlighted at the "Great German Art Exhibition" - a counter to the "Degenerate Art" exhibition in the same location, Munich's Haus der Kunst. Kampf's "Boy in Red," pictured, was painted in 1907. The work is a portrait of Kampf's then three-year-old son, Otto Gerhard, who was born in 1904.

Expressionism at play

German Expressionist artist August Macke was born in central-western Germany in 1887. Macke traveled to Paris for the first time in 1907 where he was inspired by the work of the Impressionists and, later, Robert Delaunay, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.

From 1911-1914, Macke was a prominent member of the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider") alongside artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Paul Klee. Macke is known for his bold use of color and his focus on the play of light. His "Portrait of Walter Macke with Rabbit" (1910) depicts his eldest son resting in the arms of an adult - most likely his mother, Elisabeth, who Macke married in 1909.

Walter was conceived out of wedlock, which caused some upset within the family. In order to hide the pregnancy, Macke and his wife took an extended honeymoon, traveling to Frankfurt, Paris and Tegernsee in the Bavarian Alps.

Macke produced numerous portraits of Walter, and later his second son, Wolfgang, together with his wife. The paintings show the children at play, as cowboys or drawing with pens and paper. This intimate portrait of his son Walter is actually a cut-out from a larger oil painting, but is typical of Macke's work in the Expressionist style with the use of flat, bold plains of color.

The Blue Rider group was rocked by the outbreak of World War One during which both Franz Marc and August Macke died. Macke was killed on the front in France at the beginning of World War One.

Representing the unreal

Lovis Corinth (1858-1921) was born in Tapiau, now Gvardeysk in Russia, but formerly a province of the Prussian Kingdom. Corinth studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich where he was influenced by Realism, the work of Gustav Courbet and the Barbizon School.

Corinthmoved to Berlin in 1900 after participating in an exhibition organized by the Berlin Secession the previous year. In 1911, the artist suffered stroke leaving him partially paralyzed on one side of his body and reliant on the aid of his wife. But Corinth began painting again and "Wilhelmine with Ball" was created in 1915.

The lively image depicts his wide-eyed daughter at the age of six, seated before a window and holding a ball. Together with Max Liebermann, Corinth was a leading proponent of German Impressionism. Wilhemine was a regular subject of her father's paintings, aquarelles and drawings. She went on to become a famous actress and author. Corinth died of pneumonia on a trip to the Netherlands in 1921.

Shortly before his death, Corinth wrote: "I have discovered something new: True art is the representation of the unreal."

Shock of the new

As a member of Die Brücke ("The Bridge") - an avant-garde secessionist group of artists which included Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Müller and Emil Nolde - Max Pechstein (1881-1955) was one of the most prominent proponents of German Expressionism.

Die Brückewas founded in Dresden in 1905, where Pechstein studied at the Royal Art Academy, and was one of the key groups associated with the German Expressionist movement.

Pechstein's colorful paintings were influenced by developments in the European avant-garde, such as the ideas of Matisse and the Fauves, who like the German Expressionists, shared an interest in primitive art. The crude black outlines, vivid colors and dynamic shapes are paradigmatic of the Expressionist style of representation. Pechstein was expelled from Die Brücke in 1912 after to failing to comply with the group's policy to only exhibit as a group. A trip to Palau in the South Pacific in 1914 pushed his artistic style more heavily towards Primitivism, evident in his painting "Hammock I."

Children often feature in Pechstein's works. "There is nothing more beautiful than watching newborn infants. Like little world-wise creatures traveled here from afar, they lie and breathe. The shock of arrival in open life still resonates in their rippled skin," he wrote.

Pechstein was politically engaged and, as a member of the revolutionary November Group, he became a hate figure for the extreme right. A total of 16 of Pechstein's works were included in the Nazi "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Munich in 1937.

Art and revolution

Conrad Felix Müller was born in Dresden in 1897 where he trained at the Royal Art Academy. He later began using the name Felixmüller following advice from an art dealer. He was drafted into the German army in 1917.

After the First World War, Felixmüller became an active proponent of revolutionary politics and art, joining the November Group, and in 1919, founding the Dresden Secession with Otto Dix.

Along with Dix, Felixmüller was also a proponent of the Neue Sachlichkeit or "New Objectivity" movement which emerged after the war, with many of his paintings of the Weimar period depicting the sordid realities of inter-war German society. His work was denounced as "degenerate" by the National Socialists and included in the notorious "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Munich in 1937.

His "Self-Portrait with Son Titus" (1921) signals a break from his early Expressionist-Cubist style towards a softer form of realism. Felixmüller married Londa Freiin von Berg in 1918 and the couple had two sons, Lucca and Titus. The artist is perhaps best known for his wide-eyed portraits and pictures of daily, domestic life.

Pretty in pink

Born in 1891, Otto Dix studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Dresden. Volunteering as a soldier in the German Army, Dix was profoundly affected by his experiences during the war. He fought in the Battle of the Somme and on the Eastern Front and Flanders, and was gassed and wounded.

After the war he founded the Dresden Secession group in 1919 during his expressionist phase. In 1920, he met George Grosz and became influenced by the work the Dada movement. But along with Max Beckmann, Rudolf Schlichter and George Grosz, Dix is best known as a major proponent of Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, a brutal type of realism which emphasized the ugly and often degraded aspects of life at that time, including murder, prostitution, war and death.

After the horrors of war, the birth of his daughter Nelly in 1923 appeared to offer the artist a new perspective on life and a newfound sense of hope. Dix's painting of his daughter Nelly as the Roman goddess of flowers and spring is an unusually pretty portrait by the artist known for his cold, often brutal realist style of art. The then 17-year-old poses in a sea of flowers in a pink silk dress.

Nelly was a regular model for Otto Dix and the subject of many of his paintings, including "Sleeping Baby" (1923), "Nelly with Doll" (1928) and "Death and the Girl" (1940). In 1924, the art historian and literary scholar Fritz Löffer describes the artist's depiction of his daughter as "a completely new world for Otto Dix."

Color-drenched hyperrealism

Born in 1930, Swiss painter Franz Gertsch made his international breakthrough at the Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany, in 1972. He also regularly exhibited at the Venice Biennale.

From 1986-1994, Gertsch worked on a series of large-format, monumental woodcuts. He is also known for his "hyperrealist" style of painting, which emerged in the 1970s and is closely associated with the American artist Chuck Close. As in his painting "Maria and Benz" (1970), Gertsch's painterly style mimics over-saturated or faded photographic images.

The artist uses a brush rather than a spray-gun to produce his paintings, the subjects of which are often groups of people, staged situations and young women. "A picture must always remain a picture and it must not become a substitute for reality," Gertsch once said.

Scribbles, madness and farce

Austrian painter, printmaker and photographer Arnulf Rainer, born in 1929, was self-taught. The artist is best known for an informal, combative style of art aimed at skewing bourgeois hypocrisy and societal taboos.

In the late 1940s he was influenced by the Surrealist's theories of art, which can be seen in works exploring dreams, madness and the subconscious. In the early 1960s, he began experimenting drawing under the influence of drugs and alcohol and developed a hallucinative, frenetic style - as well as a series of drawings of mentally ill artists.

In the 1970s, he branched into the media of film and photography and produced a series of images depicting death masks. "Face Farces: Grimaces, Facial Forms, Over-Drawings, Painted Photographs," a series of photographic portraits over which he had painted or drawn, was shown at Documenta 5.

Rainer made the technique of "over-painting" or "over-drawing" an art form in itself, as seen in this black and white photograph of a crying baby scribbled with pencil markings.

Philosophical sculpture

Erwin Wurm is a contemporary Austrian artist who works in a variety of mediums including video, performance and photography. He studied at the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Wurm's "One Minute Sculptures," in which the artist positions himself or various models in a variety strange poses, are perhaps his known works. His photograph "Curved Abdominal Cavity: Wittgenstein" is part of a series titled "Philosophy - Digestion" depicting subjects in a variety of offbeat poses.

"If you approach things with a sense of humor, people immediately assume you're not to be taken seriously. But I think truths about society and human existence can be approached in different ways. You don't always have to be deadly serious. Sarcasm and humor can help you see things in a lighter vein," Wurm said.

Capturing communities

The American photographer Catherine Opie was born in Ohio in 1961. After studying at the San Francisco Art Institute and the California Institute of Arts in California, Opie produced series of works portraying the lesbian and gay community in Los Angeles, surfers and high school football players.

Opie is fascinated by the concept of community and often focuses her work on documenting various subcultures and the questioning of gender constructions. Her candid portrait, "Oliver in a Tutu," is a merging of the private and public, the personal and the political.

In the image, Opie's then two-year-old son Oliver wears stereotypically feminine items of clothing such as a tiara and a pink, sequinned tutu. The intimate portrait is taken from the series "In and Around the Home" (2004-05) which documents Opie's domestic life, family, friends and neighborhood in Los Angeles.

The exhibition "Artists' Children: From Runge to Richter, from Dix to Picasso" runs through January 20, 2013 at the Kunsthalle Emden.