Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional Search Ir al contenido principal

Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
Visit Collection Exhibitions Activities Education Search
  • Visit
  • Collection
  • Exhibitions
  • Activities
  • Education

Thyssen - Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
©
Estate of Georg Grosz, Princeton, New Jersey / VEGAP
George Grosz

Street Scene (Kurfürstendamm)

1925
Oil on canvas.
81.3 x 61.3 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
572
(
1981.69
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

Halfway through the 1920s George Grosz’s gradual evolution towards more realist forms brought him close to Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), the movement springing from the legendary programmatic exhibition by the same name, which was organized by the active director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Gustav Hartlaub, and defined a whole era. The show, which brought together a heterogeneous group of German artists with a common interest in breaking with Expressionism through a new objective figuration, was in keeping with the widespread tendency of a return to order in Europe of the 1920s, but unlike in other countries, in Germany it manifested itself as a spirit of fierce social denunciation.

For Germany, the war had resulted in a toll of five million dead and a million mutilated, and affected the vast majority of German society. Following the military defeat and abdication of Wilhelm II, Berlin continued to be the capital of the newly created Republic established by the Weimar constitution of 1920.Whereas during the early days of the Great War the streets of Berlin had filled with young people extolling the virtues of war, which they viewed as a purifying sacrifice, four years later it was a very different sight. The German capital became a place of political struggle, street skirmishes and social unrest triggered by poverty and soaring inflation.

It is only logical that these years of political and moral revolution, great frustrations and great hopes should have kindled a heightened critical spirit and a new conception of art as a political weapon. Like many of his contemporaries, George Grosz translated the internal breakdown of German society into art with biting sarcasm and, like Daumier and Hogarth before him, created a sort of mercilessly enacted human comedy. The modern metropolis became a recurring theme in his work and, in the manner of a modern Bosch with a mordant critical tone and keen sense of observation, he depicted the surrounding environment with a moralising intention in order to show the hypocrisy of bourgeois life and the depravity concealed behind its outward appearance of respectability.

The present Street Scene, dated February 1925, is a good example of Grosz’s new objective painting and of his permanent rebellion against the unjust social order and the hypocrisy and vulgarity of the urban middle class. This depiction of the centrally-located Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, in which the glamour of the wealthy classes contrasts with the poverty of the homeless, immigrants and numerous war cripples, recalls the description given by Alfred Döblin in Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), which tells the story of Franz Biberkopf, an ordinary citizen who tries to make his way in a society dominated by unemployment, violence and unfulfilled promises; and also that of the plays of Bertolt Brecht, with their lurid images of modern life, of the “dull lives” of those who attempt to wade through the “jungle of cities.”

The work remained in the artist’s possession until 1938, when it was acquired by Erich Cohn, a German who had sought refuge in America and one of the first collectors to purchase works by Grosz after the artist fled Germany in 1933. Years later it passed to the Munich collector Hans Grote, whose collection, including important works by Grosz, Beckmann, Kirchner and Müller, was sold by the Galerie Thomas in Munich in 1981 with the fictitious name of “Sammlung Rheingarten.” It was then that Street Scene was acquired by Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Paloma Alarcó

20th Centurys. XX - Pintura europea. Nuevo ordenPaintingOilcanvas
Listen
Download image Print page

Tours to find it

Houses on the River (The Old Town). Casas junto al río. La ciudad vieja, 1914
Tours
Invisible Cities

A tour of cities represented, imagined and narrated, establishing a dialogue between the novel Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.

Products and publications

Street Scene (Kurfürstendamm)

Street Scene (Kurfürstendamm)

17.00 €

Poster Richard Estes: People's Flower

Poster Richard Estes: People's Flower

12.50 €

Poster Richard Estes. Telephone Booths, 1967

Poster Richard Estes. Telephone Booths, 1967

12.50 €

Museomaquia (comic book)

Museomaquia (comic book)

17.00 € 16.15 €

Visit online shop

More from the collection

George Grosz
George Grosz
Twilight (verso: Study for the Central Figure of "Twilight")
1922
George Grosz
George Grosz
Metropolis
1916 - 1917
George Grosz
George Grosz
Tatlinesque Diagram
1920
George Grosz
George Grosz
Der Stammtisch
ca. 1928 - 1930
  • Private and/or didactic use
  • Commercial use
Private and/or didactic use
Street Scene (Kurfürstendamm). Escena callejera (Kurfürstendamm), 1925
Street Scene (Kurfürstendamm)
George Grosz

©

Estate of Georg Grosz, Princeton, New Jersey / VEGAP

Terms of Use

The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundacion Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes and non-commercial uses.

However, photographed works are protected by copyright. Therefore, regardless of the terms of use of the images set out below by the Foundation, it will be necessary to obtain a license from VEGAP (www.vegap.es), or from the corresponding collective management organization in the country where the work is going to be used or, where appropriate, from the holder of their rights in order to reproduce or exploit the work.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

Non-commercial use is understood as the use of the images in a context where no profit, monetary or commercial, is generated, directly or indirectly.

Any use other than those indicated above will require the prior written authorization of the Fundación.

Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

The user agrees to use the image of the website solely and exclusively for the purposes described above and in accordance with the following terms of use, which, however, do not apply to the reproduction of the works included in the photographs, as they are protected by Copyright.

Terms of use

  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
  • The reproduction of a detail or part of the work may only be made with the prior written authorization of the Fundación In this case, the credit line must include the following mention: “detail”.
  • Any total or partial reproduction of the images of the Fundación that has been previously authorized must be accompanied by the copyright text indicated by the owners or their copyright holders as well as the following mention: Provenance: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid”.
  • The user will send free of charge to the Museum Photo Library one (1) free copy of the edition, publication or reproduction to the following address: Archivo Fotografico, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, 8 28014 Madrid, Spain.
Download image
Commercial use
Street Scene (Kurfürstendamm). Escena callejera (Kurfürstendamm), 1925
Street Scene (Kurfürstendamm)
George Grosz

©

Estate of Georg Grosz, Princeton, New Jersey / VEGAP

Terms of Use

The Photo Library of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works on its Permanent Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialized publications, you should contact the Museum's Photo Library by email at the e-mail @email.

To request images or permits for other commercial or advertising uses (general publications, merchandising, exhibitions, audio-visual works, web pages, etc.), you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail @email.

The Photo Library and the Museum's Commercial Archive manage the worldwide distribution of images of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza works, as well as their reproduction rights. The applicable rates are calculated based on the nature and proposed use of the images, as well as the availability of the requested image.

Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

However, photographed works are protected by copyright. Therefore, regardless of the terms of use of the photographs set out below by the Foundation, it will be necessary to obtain a license from  VEGAP (Visual Entidad de Gestión de Artistas Plásticos www.vegap.es) or from the corresponding collective management organizations in the country where the work is going to be used or, where appropriate, from the holder of their rights in order to reproduce or exploit the work.

Download image
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional

Navegación secundaria (EN)

  • #Thyssenmultimedia
  • Press
  • Corporate events
  • Tourism
  • Join our team
  • Newsletter
Instagram
Facebook
X
Youtube
TikTok
iVoox
LinkedIn

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza would like to thanks for the collaboration of:

Fundación Mutua Madrileña Master Card Comunidad de Madrid
©2025 Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Menú al pie (EN)

  • Legal terms and use of images
  • Public tenders
  • Transparency site
  • Accessibility and quality
  • Sustainability & 2030 Agenda
  • Contact
Ministry of Culture España es cultura | Spain is culture. The website promoting Spanish culture Paisaje de la Luz | Paseo del Prado y Buen Retiro. Paisaje de las Artes y las Ciencias
Certificación de Conformidad con el Esquema Nacional de Seguridad. Categoría Media. RD 311/2022