GEORGE GROSZ

George Grosz (1893—1959) is with­out a doubt one of the most extraor­dinary Ger­mans of the 20th century, and one of the most polit­ical artists in art history. In his exten­sive oeuvre it is espe­cially the brilliant draw­ings that cap­ti­vate view­ers with their blunt­ness and acrid satire. With his char­ac­ters—the oppressed and downtrod­den, the pimps and pros­titutes, the war cripples and war prof­i­teers—he exposes the rot, the philis­tin­ism, and the moral debauch­ery of the rul­ing class. Grosz was a cofounder of Dadaism and the Neue Sachlichkeit. Hav­ing already been put on trial dur­ing the Weimar Repub­lic for “insult­ing the armed forces”, in the early 1930s he became the object of a hate campaign by the National Social­ists. The choice to migrate to New York in 1933 prob­a­bly saved his and his fam­ily’s lives. The Nazis removed his works from the muse­ums—many key works are still miss­ing today. In the United States, Grosz con­tin­ues to crit­icise the per­nicious Zeitgeist in draw­ings and paint­ings. As an exiled Ger­man intel­lectual he enjoys the respect and the recog­ni­tion of his new home country, but eco­nom­ically he strug­gles all the way to his late return to Berlin in 1959. Increas­ing alcoholism and depres­sion do not pre­vent him from cre­at­ing an exten­sive and sig­nif­icant oeuvre in his 25 Amer­ican years. Grosz dies in Berlin in July 1959—only a few months after return­ing to his old home.