George Grosz

The important German-American artist of the New Objectivity George Grosz was born Georg Ehrenfried Groß in Berlin on July 26, 1893. He grew up in the Pomeranian town of Stolp. In 1909-1911 George Grosz attended the Royal Academy of Art in Dresden, then moved to Berlin to the School of Arts and Crafts and studied with Emil Orlik. In 1913 George Grosz travels to Paris and attends the Colarossi painting school there. In 1914 he had to go to the First World War as a soldier, but he was discharged early in 1917 as unfit for service. In the works he now produced, George Grosz processed the horrors he had experienced during the war, he drew the war cripples that were omnipresent in Berlin and, with harsh criticism of the political situation, also showed in his pictorial figures the biting poverty of the population and mocked the idiocy of the ruling class in the Weimar Republic. From 1916 on, the artist called himself George Grosz in an Americanizing manner, thus expressing his disgust with his German contemporaries. Dada, New Objectivity and "November Group" in Berlin. In 1918, the "Club Dada" was founded in Berlin, to which George Grosz belonged along with Hannah Höch, John Heartfield, the writer Walter Mehring, the theater director Erwin Piscator and others. Likewise, George Grosz, together with Otto Dix, Hannah Höch, Rudolf Schlichter and many others, belongs to the "Novembergruppe" in Berlin, which was founded in 1918. In 1920 George Grosz, together with his artist colleagues and the gallery Dr. Otto Burchard, organizes the "First International Dada Fair" in Berlin. This exhibition shows a firework of artistic creativity of the time and is at the same time a rejection of bourgeois culture. The portfolio "Gott mit uns" (God with us) exhibited by George Grosz earns him his first court case for insulting the Reichswehr. Also in 1923, George Grosz is sued for "attacking public morals" when he publishes his lithograph portfolio "Ecce Homo" at Berlin's Malik-Verlag - it becomes perhaps his most famous graphic sequence, although it is only allowed to be sold in its entirety for about a year. George Grosz unsparingly depicts the sensitivities of interwar society, the philistines, impostors, war invalids and war profiteers, and the legions of service providers - no one comes off well. 1925 sees the publication of the portfolio "Der Spießer-Spiegel" with 60 drawings. In 1928, in a third trial, the charge against George Grosz is "blasphemy," which he is said to have committed with his graphic series "Background." Painter of the horrors of war and biting social criticism. In the 1920s George Grosz makes a name for himself as an illustrator for the magazines "Ulk" and "Lustige Blätter", his works appear in the communist satirical weekly "Der Knüppel" as well as in the cultural magazine "Der Querschnitt" of the Berlin art dealer Alfred Flechtheim. 1926-1932 George Grosz works for the satirical weekly magazine "Simplicissimus". George Grosz is also significantly involved as a contributor to magazines such as "Die Pleite", "Der Gegner", "Der blutige Ernst". In 1932, George Grosz was in New York for the first time as a guest lecturer at the Art Students League. Due to the political situation in Germany, he emigrated to the USA the following year and continued to teach there until 1955. In the course of the "Degenerate Art" exhibition, a total of 285 works by George Grosz were removed from German museums. George Grosz was expatriated by the National Socialists, and in 1938 he was granted American citizenship. It was not until 1959 that George Grosz returned from the USA to Germany, where, however, he died only a few weeks later, on July 6, 1959, in Berlin.