George Grosz | |
|---|---|
 George Grosz in 1921 | |
| Born | Georg Ehrenfried Groß (1893-07-26)July 26, 1893 |
| Died | July 6, 1959(1959-07-06) (aged 65) |
| Nationality | German,American (since 1938) |
| Education | Dresden Academy |
| Known for | Painting,drawing |
| Notable work | The Funeral (Dedicated to Oscar Panizza) |
| Movement | Dada,Expressionism,New Objectivity |
George Grosz (/ɡroʊs/;German:[ɡʁoːs]ⓘ; bornGeorg Ehrenfried Groß; July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for hiscaricatural drawings and paintings ofBerlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the BerlinDada andNew Objectivity groups during theWeimar Republic. He emigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. Abandoning the style and subject matter of his earlier work, he exhibited regularly and taught for many years at theArt Students League of New York. In 1959 he returned to Berlin, where he died shortly afterwards.
Grosz was born Georg Ehrenfried Groß in Berlin, Germany, the third child of a pub owner. His parents were devoutlyLutheran.[1] Grosz grew up in thePomeranian town ofStolp (nowSłupsk,Poland).[2] After his father's death in 1900, he moved to theWedding district of Berlin with his mother and sisters.[3] At the urging of his cousin, the young Grosz began attending a weekly drawing class taught by a local painter named Grot.[4] Grosz developed his skills further by drawing meticulous copies of the drinking scenes ofEduard von Grützner, and by drawing imaginary battle scenes.[5] He was expelled from school in 1908 for insubordination.[6]
From 1909 to 1911, he studied at theDresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers wereRichard Müller,Robert Sterl, Raphael Wehle, andOsmar Schindler.[3] His first published drawing was in the satirical magazineUlk in 1910.[6] From 1912 until 1917 he studied at theBerlin College of Arts and Crafts underEmil Orlik.[3] He began painting in oils in 1912.[3]
In November 1914 Grosz volunteered for military service, in the hope that by thus preempting conscription he would avoid being sent to the front.[7] He was given a discharge after hospitalization forsinusitis in 1915.[7] In 1916 he changed the spelling of his name to "de-Germanise" and internationalise his name – thus Georg became "George" (an English spelling), while in his surname he replaced the German "ß" with its phonetic equivalent "sz".[8] He did this as a protest against German nationalism[3] and out of a romantic enthusiasm for America[6] – a legacy of his early reading of the books ofJames Fenimore Cooper,Bret Harte andKarl May – that he retained for the rest of his life.[9] His artist friend and collaborator Helmut Herzfeld likewise changed his name toJohn Heartfield at the same time.
In January 1917 Grosz was drafted for service, but in May he was discharged as permanently unfit.[10]
Following theNovember Revolution in the last months of 1918, Grosz joined theSpartacist League,[11] which was renamed theCommunist Party of Germany (KPD) in December 1918. He was arrested during theSpartakus uprising in January 1919, but escaped using fake identification documents. In 1920 he married Eva Peters.[3]
In the same year he published a collection of his drawings, titledGott mit uns ("God with us"), a satire on German society. Grosz was accused of insulting thearmy, which resulted in a 300German Mark fine and the confiscation of the plates used to print the album.[12] He also organised and exhibited at theFirst International Dada Fair.
In 1922 Grosz traveled to Russia with the Danish writerMartin Andersen Nexø. Upon their arrival inMurmansk they were briefly arrested as spies; after their credentials were approved, they were allowed to continue their journey. He met with severalBolshevik leaders such asGrigory Zinoviev,Karl Radek, andVladimir Lenin.[13] He went withArthur Holitscher to meetAnatoly Lunacharsky with whom he discussedProletkult. He rejected the concept of "proletarian culture", arguing that the term proletarian meant uneducated and uncultured. He regarded artistic talent as a "gift of the muses", which a person may be lucky enough to be born with.[14] There he also met the Constructivist artistVladimir Tatlin.[15]
Grosz's six-month stay in the Soviet Union left him unimpressed by what he had seen.[16] He ended his membership in the KPD in 1923, although his political positions were little changed.[17]
According to Grosz's sonMartin Grosz, during the 1920sNazi officers visited Grosz's studio looking for him, but because he was wearing a working man's apron Grosz was able to pass himself off as a handyman and avoid being taken into custody.[18] His work was also part of thepainting event in theart competition at the1928 Summer Olympics.[19]
On December 10, 1928 he and his publisherWieland Herzfelde were prosecuted and fined under charges ofblasphemy andsacrilege for publishing twoanticlerical drawings in his portfolio Hintergrund (Background).[20] One depicted prisoners under assault from a minister who vomits grenades and weapons onto them, and another featured a crucified Christ wearing a World War I gas mask and combat boots.
According to historian David Nash, Grosz "publicly stated that he was neither Christian norpacifist, but was actively motivated by an inner need to create these pictures". He and his publisher appealed twice, and were finally acquitted in 1929 by the Reichsgericht in Berlin.[21] "The judge decided that it was not an offense to religion, but actually was an attack on militarism. The implication is that, from Grosz’s point of view, religion was being used as essentially an opiate of the masses to encourage soldiers to die for the state. 'Shut up and obey,' was the rubric associated with this," according to art criticCamille Paglia.[22][23]
In 1942Time magazine identified Grosz as a pacifist.[24]
Bitterly anti-Nazi, Grosz left Germany shortly beforeHitler came to power. In June 1932, he accepted an invitation to teach the summer semester at theArt Students League of New York.[25] In October 1932, Grosz returned to Germany, but on January 12, 1933, he and his family emigrated to the United States.[26] Their ship docked in New York on Jan. 23, 1933, a week before Hitler came to power in Berlin.[27] Grosz became anaturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1938, and made his home inBayside, New York. In the 1930s he taught at theArt Students League, where one of his students wasRomare Bearden, who was influenced by his style ofcollage. Grosz taught at the Art Students League until 1955.[28] His other students includedJoseph Glasco[29] andRobert Cenedella, whom he mentored from 1957 to 1959.[30]
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In America, Grosz determined to make a clean break with his past, and changed his style and subject matter.[31] He continued to exhibit regularly, and in 1946 he published his autobiography,Ein kleines Ja und ein großes Nein, first translated asA Little Yes and a Big No. From 1947 to 1959, George Grosz lived inHuntington, New York, where he taught painting at the Huntington Township Art League.[32] It is said by Huntington locals that he used what was to become his most famous painting,Eclipse of the Sun, to pay for a car repair bill, in his relative penury. The painting was later acquired by house painter Tom Constantine[33] to settle a debt of $104.00.In the 1950s he opened a private art school at his home and also worked as Artist in Residence at theDes Moines Art Center. Grosz was elected into theNational Academy of Design as an Associate Academician in 1950. In 1954 he was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters.
On May 26, 1920, Grosz married Eva Louise Peter, with whom he had two sons,Peter Michael Grosz [de] (1926–2006), a historian of early German aviation, andMarty Grosz (born 1930), a jazz guitarist.
Grosz resolved to return to Berlin, and relocated there in May 1959.[34]He died there on July 6, 1959, from the effects of falling down a flight of stairs after a night of drinking.[35]
Although Grosz made his first oil paintings in 1912 while still a student,[3]his earliest oils that can be identified date from 1916.[36]By 1914, Grosz worked in a style influenced byExpressionism andFuturism, as well as by popular illustration,graffiti, and children's drawings.[7] Sharply outlined forms are often treated as if transparent.The City (1916–17) was the first of his many paintings of the modern urban scene.[37] Other examples include the apocalypticExplosion (1917),Metropolis (1917), andThe Funeral, a 1918 painting depicting a mad funeral procession. He settled in Berlin in 1918 and was a founder of the BerlinDada movement, using his satirical drawings to attack bourgeois supporters of theWeimar Republic.[38]
His drawings, usually in pen and ink which he sometimes developed further with watercolor, frequently included images of Berlin and the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Corpulent businessmen, wounded soldiers, prostitutes, sex crimes and orgies were his great subjects (for example, seeFit for Active Service). His draftsmanship was excellent although the works for which he is best known adopt a deliberately crude form of caricature in the style ofJugend.[38] Hisoeuvre includes a few absurdist works, such asRemember Uncle August the Unhappy Inventor which has buttons sewn on it,[39] and also includes a number of erotic artworks.[40]
After his emigration to the USA in 1933, Grosz "sharply rejected [his] previous work, and caricature in general."[41] In place of his earlier corrosive vision of the city, he now painted conventional nudes and manylandscape watercolors. More acerbic works, such asCain, or Hitler in Hell (1944), were the exception. In his autobiography, he wrote: "A great deal that had become frozen within me in Germany melted here in America and I rediscovered my old yearning for painting. I carefully and deliberately destroyed a part of my past."[42] Although a softening of his style had been apparent since the late 1920s, Grosz's work assumed a more sentimental tone in America, a change generally seen as a decline.[43] His late work never achieved the critical success of his Berlin years.[44]
In 1968, theHeckscher Museum of Art in Huntington purchased the paintingEclipse of the Sun for $15,000.00, raising the money by public subscription. As it portrays the warmongering of arms manufacturers, this painting became a destination of protesters of theVietnam War in Heckscher Park (where the museum is sited) in the late 1960s and early 70s.[citation needed]
In 2006, the Heckscher proposed sellingEclipse of the Sun at its then-current appraisal of approximately $19,000,000.00 to pay for repairs and renovations to the building. There was such public outcry that the museum decided not to sell, and announced plans to create a dedicated space for display of the painting in the renovated museum.[45]
Grosz's art influenced otherNew Objectivity artists such asHeinrich Maria Davringhausen,Anton Räderscheidt, andGeorg Scholz.[46] In the United States, the artists influenced by his work included the social realistsBen Shahn andWilliam Gropper.[47]
In 1960, Grosz was the subject of the Oscar-nominated short filmGeorge Grosz' Interregnum. He is fictionalized as "Fritz Falke" inArthur R.G. Solmssen's novelA Princess in Berlin (1980). In 2002, actorKevin McKidd portrayed Grosz in a supporting role as an eager artist seeking exposure inMax, regardingAdolf Hitler's youth.
The Grosz estate filed a lawsuit in 1995 against the Manhattan art dealerSerge Sabarsky, arguing that Sabarsky had deprived the estate of appropriate compensation for the sale of hundreds of Grosz works he had acquired. In the suit, filed inNew York Supreme Court in Manhattan, the Grosz estate claims that Sabarsky secretly acquired 440 Grosz works for himself, primarily drawings and watercolors produced in Germany in the 1910s and 20s.[44] The lawsuit was settled in summer in 2006.[48]
In 2003 the Grosz family initiated a legal battle against theMuseum of Modern Art in New York City, asking that three paintings be returned. According to documents, the paintings were sold to the Nazis after Grosz fled the country in 1933. The museum never settled the claim, arguing that a three-yearstatute of limitations in bringing such a claim had expired. It is well documented that the Nazis stole thousands of paintings during World War II and many heirs of German painters continue to fight museums in order to reclaim such works.[49]
In 2015, Ralph Jentsch – the managing director of the Grosz estate since 1994 – co-founded a Berlin-based nonprofit organization dedicated to the artist. In 2022, the Little Grosz Museum (Kleines Grosz Museum) opened in Berlin'sSchöneberg district. Housed in a midcentury former gas station that was converted to a living space in 2008, the museum is funded by private donors[50] and also houses a café and shop.[51]
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