artistic circles there was a call for a return to order and re-appreciation of tradition and of the natural world. In Italy, this was encouraged by the magazine Valori Plastici and came together in the Novecento, a group that exhibited in the Venice Biennale and was joined by many Futurists who had rejected their former work. Mario Sironi, a member of this group, stated that they “would not imitate the world created by God but would be inspired by it.” The “New Objectivity” or Neue Sachlichkeit, as coined by Hartlaub, described the developments in Germany and became the title of an exhibition that he staged in 1925. Neue Sachlichkeit was influenced not only by the “return to order” but also a call to arms among more left-leaning artists who wanted to use their art in a forward, political manner that expressionism didn't enable them to do. In Belgium, there was another vein in the common trend, which would later be referred to as a “retour à l’humain”. Movements When Hartlaub defined the idea of the Neue Sachlichkeit, he identified two groups: the verists, who “[tore] the objective form of the world of contemporary facts and represent current experience in its tempo and fevered temperature,” and the classicists, who “[searched] more for the object of timeless ability to embody the external laws of existence in the artistic sphere.” Although Roh originally meant the term 'Magic Realism' to be more or less synonymous with Neue Sachlichkeit, the artists identified by Hartlaub as 'classicists' later became associated with Roh's term. These 'Magic Realists' were all influenced by the classicism developed in Italy by the Novecento, and in turn by de Chirico's concept of metaphysical art, which had also branched into surrealism. Art critic Wieland Schmeid in 1977 posited that despite the fact that the terms were meant to refer to the same thing, the understanding of them as different groups derives from the fact that the movement had a right and left wing, with the Magic Realists on the right — many later supporting fascism or accommodating to it— and the verists we associate as the Neue Sachlichkeit on the left — fighting against fascism. The two groups in addition to having different political philosophies likewise had different artistic philosophies. The third movement that is important to include in post-expressionism, and which Roh excluded, is the reaction to Flemish Expressionism, as opposed to