Degenerate Art: "German Peasants – From a Jewish Perspective" (1937) In the National Socialist conception of art, "blood" and "race" were the sources of artistic intuition. The photo shows the supposedly distorted representation of German peasants by the "Jewish-Bolshevist" artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, three leading representatives of German Expressionism. In contrast, "truly German" artists such as Leopold Schmutzler were said to strive solely for beauty and perfection.