George Grosz

George Grosz was a principle member of Neue Sachlichkeit, or ‘New Objectivity’, a collective of artists disillusioned by the ravages that World War I took on society and its people. They abandoned the idealism of 20th-century art in favour of using pictures to critique contemporary German culture. Drawing on caricature, satire and Surrealism, Grosz portrayed the leaders, bohemians and labourers of the Weimar Republic unflinchingly in order to highlight the turmoil of political life, the rise of the metropolis, sexual liberation, the decay of society and alienation from nature. ‘Brutality! Clarity that hurts!... Paint as fast as you can! Capture time as it races by,’ he said.

Born in Berlin in 1893, Grosz studied art in Dresden and Berlin between 1909 and 1914. During his teens he began making observational sketches of the fantastical and the macabre, including prostitutes and circus workers. After college Grosz joined the army, but was discharged after six months due to a sinus infection. Recalled in 1917, he suffered a breakdown and was admitted to an asylum.

Scarred by the horrors he had witnessed, Grosz’s art became explicit in its shock and disgust, and he aspired to become Germany’s leading satirist, inspired by Honoré Daumier and William Hogarth. One French critic labelled his output, ‘the most definitive catalogue of man’s depravity in all history.’

By 1919, Grosz had joined the fledgling Dada movement in Berlin, on account of their belief in the absurdity of war. He exhibited pioneering photomontages that doubled as left-wing propaganda, causing him frequent trouble with the authorities. During the 1920s he became a leader of Neue Sachlichkeit, creating works like Eclipse of the Sun (1926), in which headless bureaucrats debate the future of the German people.

A week before Hitler seized power in 1933, Grosz permanently relocated to New York City. To the Nazi party, his work was highly offensive — they labelled him ‘Cultural Bolshevist Number One’ and included his pictures in a show of ‘degenerate’ art held in Munich in 1937.

In America Grosz held a number of teaching positions. During the 1940s he abandoned misanthropic motifs in favour of more sentimental topics, including nudes and landscapes. In 1959, during a return visit to West Berlin, he fell down the stairs following a night of drinking and died shortly after, aged 65.