Georg Scholz (October 10, 1890 – November 27, 1945) was a German painter, member of theNew Objectivity movement.
Scholz was born inWolfenbüttel and had his artistic training at theKarlsruhe Academy, where his teachers includedHans Thoma andWilhelm Trübner.[1] He later studied in Berlin underLovis Corinth.[1] After military service inWorld War I lasting from 1915 to 1918, he resumed painting, working in a style fusingcubist andfuturist ideas.
In 1919 Scholz became a member of theCommunist Party of Germany,[2] and his work of the next few years is harshly critical of the social and economic order in postwar Germany.[3] HisIndustrial Farmers of 1920 is an oil painting with collage that depicts a Bible-clutching farmer with money erupting from his forehead, seated next to his monstrous wife who cradles a piglet. Their subhuman son, his head open at the top to show that it is empty, is torturing a frog. Perhaps Scholz' best-known work, it is typical of the paintings he produced in the early 1920s, combining a controlled, crisp execution with corrosive sarcasm.
Scholz quickly became one of the leaders of theNew Objectivity, a group of artists who practiced a cynical form of realism. The most famous among this group areMax Beckmann,George Grosz andOtto Dix, and Scholz's work briefly vied with theirs for ferocity of attack. By 1925, however, his approach had softened into something closer toneoclassicism, as seen in theSelf-Portrait in front of an Advertising Column of 1926 and theSeated Nude with Plaster Bust of 1927.
In 1925, he was appointed a professor at the Baden State Academy of Art in Karlsruhe, where his students includedRudolf Dischinger. Scholz began contributing in 1926 to the satirical magazineSimplicissimus, and in 1928 he visitedParis where he especially appreciated the work ofBonnard.
With the rise to power ofHitler and theNational Socialists in 1933, Scholz was quickly dismissed from his teaching position. Declared aDegenerate Artist, his works were among those seized in 1937 as part of a campaign by theNazis to "purify" German culture, and he was forbidden to paint in 1939.
In 1945, the Frenchoccupation forces appointed Scholz mayor ofWaldkirch, but he died that same year, in Waldkirch.
