SCHWERIN, Germany — Works by sculptor Arno Breker, favored by the Nazis for his monumental, classically inspired figures, have gone on display amid controversy over Breker's links to Adolf Hitler and Breker's flourishing career in the Third Reich.
Officials in the northeastern city of Schwerin say the exhibition presents a chance to re-examine the work of a talented artist whose career was clouded by his association with Hitler and the Nazi leader's favorite architect, Albert Speer.
But 30 local artists, gallery owners and art historians appealed to the city in a letter to cancel the exhibit. And Klaus Staeck, head of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, canceled his own exhibition scheduled for next year in Schwerin in protest.
Hermann Junghans, Schwerin's deputy mayor, said extensive documentation alongside the 70 works would prevent any whitewash.
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"The show is absolutely necessary to have a discussion about Breker, but we don't assume that we're going to be the ones to end the debate," Junghans told the Associated Press before Friday's opening.
"It was clear to us that this would be controversial, that's why the decision didn't come easily. Everyone will see that we are far too critical of Breker for this to be any kind of rehabilitation."
Breker, who died in 1991 at age 90, studied architecture and sculpture in Dusseldorf. An admirer of Auguste Rodin, he worked for several years in Paris before returning to Germany in the 1930s. His style appealed strongly to the leaders of the Nazi regime, who gave him lucrative commissions to create works for buildings such as Hitler's chancellery and the still-standing Olympic Stadium in Berlin. Many of his sculptures were destroyed after the war.
The exhibit has works from his pre-Nazi, Third Reich and post-World War II periods.
The early works, more delicate and inspired by Greek and Roman sculpture, give way to superhuman, muscular figures done for the Nazis, and then to more personal work such as portrait sculpture from the latter part of his life, including a bust of Salvador Dali and a sculpture of French author and filmmaker Jean Cocteau.
Curator Rudolf Conrades said he was fascinated by how someone could both work closely with the Nazis and maintain friendships with people such as the surrealist Dali.
"If there's anything that's dangerous about Breker, it is our fear of him," Conrades said.
Bernd Neumann, Germany's culture minister, said the exhibit would prevent an "aura of the forbidden" from attaching to Breker's work.
"I am in favor of a solidly grounded, critical exchange in which questions of the political corruptibility of artists, of artistic freedom and responsibility must have their place in addition to discussions of aesthetics and ideology," Neumann said in a statement.
"Whether that will happen in Schwerin, I can't predict."