Modern artworks whose style, artist or subject did not meet with the approval of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists were labeled "degenerate art." From 1937, the Nazis confiscated such works from German museums. In a traveling exhibition, "degenerate art" was held up for public ridicule. Here we see Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Hitler at the original exhibition in Munich.

Hitler had an affinity for Romanticism and 19th century painting and preferred peaceful country scenes. His private collection included works by Cranach, Tintoretto and Bordone. Like his role models Ludwig I. of Bavaria and Frederick the Great, Hitler wanted to manage his own art exhibition at retirement, to be shown in the city of Linz on the River Danube in the "Führer Museum."

The National Socialists were not the first to persecute avant-garde artists, but they took it a step further by banning their works from museums. In 1937, the authorities had over 20,000 art works removed from 101 state-owned German museums. Anything that the Nazis didn't consider edifying to the German people was carted off.

Abstract art had no place in Hitler's "national style," as grew clear when the "Great German Art Exhibition" put traditional landscape, historical and nude paintings by artists including Fritz Erler, Hermann Gradl and Franz Xaver Stahl on display in Munich on July 18, 1937. The closer the depicted subject to the actual model was, the more beautiful it was in the eyes of the Führer.

Even those in Hitler's inner circle were highly unsure which artists he approved of. The 1937 "Great German Art Exhibition" and the simultaneous "Degerate Art" exhibition in Munich's Court Garden Arcades brought some clarity. Unwelcome were creative artists of the modern period including Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Pechstein.

In the "Degerate Art" exhibition, 650 confiscated artworks from 32 German museums were on display, the exhibits equated with sketches by mentally handicapped persons and shown together with photos of crippled persons. The intention: to provoke revulsion and aversion among visitors. Over two million visitors saw the exhibition on its tour of various cities.

The "Degenerate Artworks Confiscation Law" of May 31, 1938 retroactively legalized their unremunerated acquisition by the state. The law remained valid in the postwar years, the allies determining that it had simply been a redistribution of state property. Unlike stolen artworks, pieces that the Nazis labled "degenerate" and had removed from museums can be freely traded today.

The confiscated art was taken to storage facilities in Berlin and at Schönhausen Palace. Many works were sold by Hitler's four art merchants: Bernhard A. Böhmer, Karl Buchholz, Hildebrand Gurlitt and Ferdinand Möller. On March 20, 1939 the Berlin fire department burned approximately 5,000 unsold artifacts, calling it an "exercise."

125 works were earmarked for an auction in Switzerland. A commission charged by Hermann Göring and others with liquefying the "degenerate" art products estimated the minimum bidding prices and commissioned the Fischer Gallery in Lucerne to carry out the auction. Taking place on June 30, 1939, it met with eager interest worldwide.

Over 21,000 works of "degenerate art" were confiscated. Estimates on the number subsequently sold differ; sources estimate 6,000 to 10,000. Others were destroyed or disappeared. Hundreds of artworks believed lost turned up in Cornelius Gurlitt's collection — and reignited the discussion.

Georg Baselitz is seen here in 2010, standing in front of two of his works at the Albertinum, the modern art museum in Dresden. And yes, the paintings — which brought him worldwide fame in the 1970s — are meant to be upside down.

Baselitz launched his career with provocative paintings in the 1960s, at a time when the Berlin-Weissensee art school had already dismissed him for being immature. The 1962/63 painting Die grosse Nacht im Eimer (The Big Night Down the Drain), showing a masturbating male figure, is one of his most famous paintings from that period.

Born in 1938 as Hans-Georg Kern in the Saxon town of Deutschbaselitz, he began studying art in the mid 1950s, first in East and then in West Berlin, where he moved in 1958. As a tribute to his hometown, he began using the surname Baselitz in 1961. Above, a woman contemplates his 2016 painting Offenes Tor (Open Gate) at the White Cube contemporary art gallery in London.

Baselitz resisted the art world dogma that he encountered on both sides of the border. In the former East Germany, painting was meant to serve as a formal depiction, while in the West abstraction was prized above all else. The young painter did not feel at home with either ideology. In the end, he chose to use a different perspective to express himself, as seen here in Dinner in Dresden.

Baselitz produced more than 60 "Russian" paintings between 1998 and 2005, defamiliarizing motifs remembered from his childhood in East Germany — a belated rebellion against the dogma of Socialist realism with its strong tendency toward objectivity. He even painted the founder of the Soviet Union upside down, in the 1999 work Lenin on the Tribune, seen here.

In 2015, Baselitz presented eight self-portraits at the Corderie dell'Arsenale as part of the 56th Venice Biennale. A photo that, due to age, wasn't particularly enchanting, served as model for his paintings. It wasn't his first appearance at the Biennale: in 1980, Baselitz presented a wooden sculpture at the German pavilion that stirred controversy for its similarity to Adolf Hitler.

The Biennale inspired Baselitz to turn to sculpture. "The sculptures will come into being somehow, if you devote yourself to this work," he thought. He chose wood as material, saying: "Well, the wood doesn't have a choice if I hammer at it long enough." His Dresden Women (above) were shown by the Dresden state art collection to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2009.

Protesting a planned change to a German law on protecting cultural goods, Baselitz announced in July 2015 that he would withdraw his loans from German museums. According to the revision, entire museum collections would have been put under protection, barred from export outside Germany. The plans were later relaxed. Here, the cycle CDF includes linocuts and xylographs.

Georg Baselitz is still one of the world's most significant contemporary artists. The current German art ranking Kunstkompass lists him in fourth place, a rank which has strongly influenced the price of his works. Last year, he sold his bronze sculpture Zero Dom (Zero Dome) for €950,000 ($1.2 million). Whether the sculpture has been turned on its head or not remains a topic of speculation.