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George Grosz (Georg Ehrenfried Gross)
Berlin, 1893-1959
Grosz was an ideologically committed painter and political activist who used art as a weapon for these ends. He began his artistic career as a caricaturist using a style which expressed biting social criticism. In 1917, together with the brothers John Heartfield and Wieland Herzfelde, he founded the publishing house Malik, which was dedicated to the publication of books and magazines of a subversive type. Grosz published numerous drawings and some writings which at times led to problems with the authorities. From 1917 to 1920 Grosz was one of the members of the Berlin Dada group and shortly afterwards he became the leading artist of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement.
During the decade of the 1920s his art expressed his disgust with post-war Germany. The modern city became the leading subject of his work and, like a contemporary Hieronymous Bosch, he depicted his surroundings with a biting critical tone and an acute sense of observation in works which had a moralising intent. Grosz was the artist who perhaps best of all knew how to portray accurately 1920s Berlin. Nowadays, Grosz's vision, with its mordant caricatures and brilliant recreation of Berlin street life, is one of the most important records of Weimar Republic.
In 1933 the artist fled Nazi Germany and spent the rest of his life in America, although he returned to Berlin just before his death. In 1938, on being deprived of his German passport, he acquired American citizenship.
Dückers, A.: George Grosz. Das druckgraphische Werk. Frankfurt-Berlin-Vienna, 1975 (English edition, San Francisco, 1996).
Hess, H.: George Grosz. London, 1974 (English edition, New Haven, 1985).
Schuster, P.-K. (ed.): George Grosz, Berlin-New York. Exhibition catalogue Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1995.
Vergo, P.: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Twentieth-century German Painting. London, 1992.
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