George Grosz
George Grosz (
July 26,
1893 â€"
July 6,
1959) was a prominent member of the
Berlin Dada and
New Objectivity group, known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s.
George Grosz was born
Georg Ehrenfried Groß in
Berlin,
Germany but changed his name in 1916 out of an enthusiasm for America.
[Sabarsky, 1985, p.250] (His artist friend and collaborator Helmut Herzfeld changed his name to
John Heartfield at the same time.)
In 1914 Grosz voluntered for military service, as he like many other artists embraced the first world war as "the war to end all wars", but he was quickly disillusioned, and was given a discharge after hospitalization in 1915. In January 1917 he was drafted for service, but in May he was discharged as permanently unfit.
[Sabarsky, 1985, p. 26.]Grosz was arrested during the
Spartakus uprising in January
1919, but escaped using fake identification documents; he joined the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the same year. In
1921 Grosz was accused of insulting the
army, which resulted in a 300
German Mark fine and the destruction of the collection
Gott mit uns ("God with us"), a satire on German society. Grosz left the KPD in
1922 after having spent five months in Russia and meeting
Lenin and
Trotsky, because of his antagonism to any form of dictatorial authority.
In his drawings, usually in pen and ink which he sometimes developed further with water color, Grosz did much to create the image most have of
Berlin and the
Weimar Republic in the
1920s. Corpulent businessmen, wounded soldiers, prostitutes, sex crimes and orgies were his great subjects. His draftsmanship was excellent although the works he is best known for adopt a deliberately crude form of caricature. He made a few absurd art works, such as "Remember Uncle August the Happy Inventor" which had buttons sewn on it (
see it here), but most of his works were realistic, as in [
1] these drawings in the
World Museum of Erotic Art.
Bitterly anti-Nazi, Grosz left Germany in
1932 and was invited to teach at the
Art Students' League in
New York in
1933. He became a
naturalized citizen of the
United States in
1938. Although a softening of his style had been apparent since the late 1920s, Grosz's work turned toward a sentimental
romanticism in America, a change generally seen as a decline.
He painted
Cain, or Hitler in Hell in 1944 showing the dead attacking Hitler in Hell. During this period he also worked as Artist in Residence at the Des Moines Art Center. Even though he had American citizenship, he returned to Germany in
1959 where he died on
July 6 of that year from the effects of a night of drinking.
In 1960, Grosz was the subject of the Oscar-nominated short film
George Grosz' Interregnum.
Quotes
*
A deeply disillusioned man, he saw humanity as essentially bestial and the city of Berlin as a sink of depravity and deprivation, its streets crowded with unprincipled profiteers, prostitutes, war-crippled dregs and a variety of peverts. A communist, his feeling of social outrage stimulated him to produce the most biting drawings and paintings. -- Trewin Copplestone
*
In Grosz's Germany, everything and everybody is for sale. All human transactions, except for the class solidarity of the workers, are poisoned. The world is owned by four breeds of pig: the capitalist, the officer, the priest and the hooker, whose other form is the sociable wife. He was one of the hanging judges of art. -- Robert Hughes
*
My aim is to be understood by everyone. I reject the 'depth' that people demand nowadays, into which you can never descend without a diving bell crammed with cabbalistic bullshit and intellectual metaphysics. This expressionistic anarchy has got to stop... a day will come when the artist will no longer be this bohemian, puffed-up anarchist but a healthy man working in clarity within a collectivist society. -- Grosz
*Grosz, George (1946).
A Little Yes and a Big No. New York: The Dial Press.
*Michalski, Sergiusz (1994).
New Objectivity. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-9650-0
*Sabarsky, Serge, editor (1985).
George Grosz: The Berlin Years. New York: Rizzoli. ISBN 0-8478-0668-5
* http://george-grosz.com - brief biography and pictures
* http://www.tendreams.org/grosz.htm - Ten Dreams Galleries
