Detail View: Visual Resources Teaching Collection: Germany: A Winter's Tale

aahi0019310

Germany: A Winter's Tale

full view

1918

creation

George Grosz (German, 1893-1959)

male

German draughtsman and painter. Born in Berlin, Grosz spent his childhood in a cavalry barracks. He studied at the Dresden Academy (1909–12) and the Berlin Kunstgewerbeschule (1912–14) before volunteering for the army. Discharged as unfit in 1915, he was conscripted in 1917 and, mistakenly, sentenced to execution in 1918; from now on the German army was one of the principal targets of his savage and telling satires. Grosz and his fellow student John Heartfield (both Anglicized their names in 1917) had collaborated on Dada collages and journals during the war and in 1920 he was a leading figure in the first international Dada exhibition in Berlin. In the same year he published Gott mit uns, ten photolithographs of his spare and almost naive line drawings, a bitter attack on the German military for which he was arrested and fined. Undeterred he issued the satirical collection The Face of the Ruling Class in 1921. Further court appearances followed in 1923 and 1928. In his drawings and paintings, which assimilated elements from Cubism, Futurism, and, particularly, de Chirico's Pittura metafisica, Grosz established archetypal images of post-war German militarists and profiteers, exemplified by The Pillars of Society (1926; New York, MoMa) in which priest, soldier, businessman, editor, and aristocrat are mercilessly caricatured. As a Communist, atheist, and satirist Grosz was a natural target for the National Socialists but left for America in 1932. His American years were artistically disappointing and in 1959 he returned to Berlin, only to die in an accident. (Grove Art Online accessed 2007-10-17)

paintings (visual works)

oil paintings

paintings

215 cm (H) x 132 cm (W)

Pfeiffer, Ingrid, editor. Splendor and Misery in the Weimar Republic. Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2017.

978-3-7774-2933-5

83

2

ISBN

unknown

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© George Grosz

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