George Grosz
George Grosz was a prominent German artist known for his sharp and critical social commentary during the tumultuous Weimar Republic period. Born in 1893, his early life was marked by familial struggles, leading to a passion for art that developed after he was expelled from high school. Grosz gained recognition for his caricatures and expressionistic works, which often depicted the darker aspects of society, including the corrupt bourgeoisie and the horrors of war. His experiences as a soldier in World War I profoundly influenced his art, prompting him to produce grotesque and satirical pieces that highlighted the absurdities of conflict and societal decay.
As an outspoken leftist, Grosz became a target of the National Socialists, who condemned his work as "degenerate art." His critical portrayals of figures like Adolf Hitler and the socio-political climate of his time drew ire from the regime, leading to his emigration to the United States in 1932. Although he continued to create and comment on political issues while in America, his work became less aggressive compared to his earlier pieces. Grosz's later years were marked by a sense of disillusionment with both his homeland and his experiences abroad. He returned to Germany in 1959 but faced personal tragedy shortly afterward, passing away due to complications from alcoholism. Grosz remains a vital figure in art history for his unflinching critique of society and his reflections on the human condition.
Subject Terms
George Grosz
Painter
- Born: July 26, 1893
- Birthplace: Berlin, Germany
- Died: July 6, 1959
- Place of death: West Berlin, West Germany (now Berlin, Germany)
Identification: German graphic artist, painter, and author
Significance: Noted for its unrelenting exposure of social ills and its scathing depictions of contemporary figures, Grosz’s art was a major target of the Nazis’ Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937
Because of his father’s business failures in Berlin, Grosz spent much of his early childhood in the Pomeranian town of Stolp, where he developed an intense love of the countryside and nature. After his father died in 1900, his mother moved the family to a working-class quarter of Berlin, but later returned to Stolp, where Grosz, a sensitive but audacious young man, was expelled from high school at the age of fifteen. Encouraged by a local art teacher, he painted and drew assiduously; within a year he obtained admission to the Royal Saxon Academy of Fine Arts at Dresden. In 1911 he returned to Berlin to study at the School of Applied Arts.
Grosz’s first caricature appeared in 1910 in a weekly humorous supplement to a major Berlin daily newspaper. In the spring of 1913 he went to Paris and drew models at the Croquis Calarossi for about eight months. In November, 1914, he enlisted in the German army. Though World War I brought Grosz new subject matter for his uncompromisingly critical art, it also shook him to the core. He was temporarily discharged in May, 1915—ostensibly as a result of sinus surgery. He may have been on the verge of a breakdown, however, as he was admitted to a mental hospital in January, 1917. After four months his permanent discharge came through, and he was released. He published a collection of grotesque and darkly satirical drawings from the war that same year (Klein Grosz-Mappe), followed by the scathing Face of the Ruling Class in 1919. By then he was well on the way to becoming a famous social critic through his aggressive satire, and was a major avant-garde figure of the Weimar Republic period. He became known for his expressionistic portraits of vulgar prostitutes, satiated and parasitic industrialists, bloodstained military officers, and hypocrites of all sorts.
As an avowed leftist and erstwhile member of the Communist Party, Grosz was destined to attract the attention of the National Socialists, whom he quickly and rightly viewed as a serious threat to the Left. Grosz satirized Adolf Hitler and the Brownshirts in his drawings. His painting “Rabble Rouser” (1928) is both a universal allegory of demagoguery and a depiction specifically of the Nazi leader, complete with swastika and a paint pot at the central figure’s feet, signifying the derisive epithet “housepainter” for Hitler’s failed art career.
In June, 1932, Grosz went to the United States to teach at the Art Students League in New York City. He returned to Germany for a short time, but since he had come to be harassed by the Nazi paramilitary organization known as the SA (Sturm Abteilung), he decided to leave Germany for good in January, 1933—eighteen days before Hitler was named chancellor. He continued to publish satirical drawings of the Nazis, casting German fascism in terms of a visual allegory of Cain and Abel. In general, however, his work became less aggressively critical while he lived in America. Nazi persecution did not, however, relent while Grosz was living abroad. He continued to speak out, both verbally and through his art, against all attempts to suppress German art and artists, as well as against Nazi attempts to appropriate German artistic traditions for their own propaganda.
In 1937 Hitler’s minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, issued a decree requiring the “cleansing” of avant-garde paintings from German art museums. In the months that followed, more than sixteen thousand works were collected. The Nazis confiscated 285 works by Grosz, of which five oil paintings, two watercolors and thirteen graphic works were displayed in the infamous Degenerate Art Exhibition, which opened in July, 1937. The centerpiece of the Grosz collection in that exhibition was his 1927 portrait of the poet Max Hermann-Neisse, a diminutive seated figure that the Nazis labeled “loathsome subject matter” (Hermann-Neisse was a Jew who had emigrated in 1933). The Nazis also exhibited Grosz’s well-known expressionist painting Metropolis (1916-1917), a violently red-toned, frenetic vision of city life.
In March, 1938, Grosz learned that his German citizenship was revoked and that his wife’s remaining property had been confiscated. During that same year he was granted U.S. citizenship. World War II brought out something of the force of his earlier bitterness about Germany again, and his most famous picture of the period, Cain (1944), shows a shabby Hitler in Hell beside a mountain of skeletons.
Grosz published his first autobiographical book in 1946, titled A Little Yes and a Big No. Interestingly, his leftist sympathies did not get him into trouble in the United States, either before or after the war, in contrast to other German exiles in America, notably Bertolt Brecht, who had to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947. Nevertheless, Grosz was disillusioned in large measure with his experience in America, although he never really wanted to return to Germany. When he visited Europe in 1954 he was pleased to find interest in his work. His wife wanted to return to Germany for good, which the couple did in 1959. However, there was to be no happy ending; on July 6, within two months of his return home, a heavy drinker, Grosz choked to death after a night of excess.