20th-century German male artists

Arnold Zadikow (27 March 1884, in Kolberg, Pomerania – 8 March 1943, at the Theresienstadt ghetto) was a modernist German-Jewish sculptor and medalist who worked in Germany and France. Zadikow studied under the neoclassical sculptor Heinrich Waderé
and mainly worked on portrait busts, gravestones and plaques. He was a soldier on the Western Front during the Great War and sustained combat injuries in 1917 before being taken to a British prisoner of war camp. After the war, he dwelt mainly in Munich and Rome, but briefly worked in Paris in 1932. Zadikow liked to work with biblical motifs, and his sculpture of the young David was displayed in the entrance of the Berlin Jewish Museum in 1933. Considered his most important work, the statue was lost during the Second World War.
In 1933, sensing trouble for Germany's Jewish population, Zadikow moved to Prague with his wife Hilda and their daughter Marianka. He was later joined by other German artists such as Oskar Kokoschka, John Heartfield and Thomas Theodor Heine. In the wake of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Jews in the country faced increasing persecution, and finally on 15 May 1942, the Zadikows were rounded up and ordered to board a train to Theresienstadt ghetto, where Arnold died. Hilda and Marianka were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau the following year, but managed to survive long enough to be liberated in 1945.Throughout his working life, Zadikow designed decorative gravestones, including that of the German physician and pioneering sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. The upright headstone in gray granite is inset with a bronze bas-relief portrait of Hirschfeld in profile and the slab covering the tomb is engraved with Hirschfeld's Latin motto, "Per Scientiam ad Justitiam". Whilst in Paris, he was also commissioned by Albert Einstein to produce a headstone for a family member. According to Zadikow's daughter, Marianka, Einstein provided the family with an affidavit for use in an immigration application for the US; although Zadikow was unable to afford the visa.

Walter Gramatté (8 January 1897 in Berlin – 9 February 1929 in Hamburg) was a German expressionist painter who specialized in magic realism. He worked in Berlin, Hamburg, Hiddensee and Barcelona. He often painted with a mystical view of nature. Many of his works were inspired by his experiences in the First World War and his illness.

Erich Büttner (7 October 1889 – 12 September 1936) was a German painter. From 1906 to 1911 he studied at the Unterrichtsanstalt des Kunstgewerbemuseums Berlin.
In 1908 he became a member of Berlin Secession.

John Decker (b. Leopold von der Decken, November 8, 1895 – June 8, 1947) was a painter, set designer and caricaturist in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s.

Fritz Ascher (17 October 1893 in Berlin, Germany – 26 March 1970 in Berlin, Germany) was a German artist, whose work is characterized by Expressionist and Symbolist sensitivity. In paintings, works on paper and poetry he explored existential questions and themes of contemporary social and cultural relevance, of spirituality and mythology. Ascher's expressive strokes and intense colors create emotionally intense and authentic work.

Arnold Bode (23 December 1900 – 3 October 1977) was a German architect, painter, designer and curator.Arnold was born in Kassel, Germany. From 1928 to 1933, he worked as a painter and university lecturer in Berlin. However, when the Nazis came to power they banned him from his profession. He returned to his home town of Kassel following the war.
Bode organized the first documenta exhibition in Kassel in 1955. This featured a broad overview of 20th-century art using large spaces in an innovative way. It was an unprecedented success. Frieze Magazine claims: 'documenta's singularity becomes clear in comparison with the Venice Biennale, which began in 1895 and inspired the Bienal de São Paulo in 1951 before spawning endless copies across the globe in the 1990s. After the first national pavilion was built in 1907 by Belgium in the Giardini, the Biennale became a battleground between countries, their artists and their pavilions: an Olympics of art. By contrast, documenta's internationalism remains rooted in the failures of nationalism: the defeat and material hardship wrought by National Socialism and the repressed shame surrounding the Holocaust.'Bode organized three more documenta exhibitions, finishing with documenta 4. Others have since continued to produce regular documenta exhibitions in Kassel. Bode received the German Federal Cross of Merit in 1974.
Bode's daughter is Renee Nele.

Hans Nathan Feibusch (15 August 1898 – 18 July 1998) was a German painter and sculptor of Jewish heritage who lived and worked in Britain from 1933 until his death. He is best known for his murals, particularly in Anglican churches. In all he worked in thirty Anglican churches (28 as a muralist, and two—including Ely Cathedral—as sculptor only) and produced what is probably the largest body of work in his particular métier by any artist in the history of the Church of England.

Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (11 July 1893, in Frankfurt-am-Main – 7 January 1965, in Allambie Heights, in Sydney) was a German-born Australian artist.
His formative education was 1912–1914 at Debschitz art school in Munich. He studied at the Bauhaus from 1919–24 and remained working there until 1926 where, along with Kurt Schwerdtfeger, he further developed the Farblichtspiele ('coloured-light-plays'), which used a projection device to produced moving colours on a transparent screen accompanied by music composed by Hirschfeld Mack. It is now regarded as an early form of multimedia. He was a participant, along with the former Bauhaus master Gertrud Grunow, in den II. Kongreß für Farbe-Ton-Forschung (Hamburg 1. - 5. Oktober 1930) (English: Second Congress for Colour-Sound Research, Hamburg). In 1923 he participated in the prestigious film festival "Der Absolute Film in Berlin with other film producers such as Hans Richter Viking Eggeling, Walter Ruttmann, Fernand Léger. Francis Picabia and Renée Clair. Music and colour theory remained lifelong interests, informing his art work in a number of media, and it was the inspiration for his well-respected and influential teaching.

Walter Rudolf Leistikow (1865–1908) was a German landscape painter, graphic artist, designer and art critic.

Hans Paul Klimsch (15 June 1868 in Frankfurt – 4 June 1917) was a German Impressionist painter and illustrator, best known for his landscapes and animals. He was one of the foremost representatives in Germany of the plein air style.