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George Grosz Lithograph

21X17 inches framed Vintage Lithograph Grosz, George [Georg] (b Berlin, 26 July 1893; d W. Berlin, 6 July 1959). German painter, draughtsman and illustrator. He is particularly valued for his caustic caricatures, in which he used the reed pen with notable success. Although his paintings are not quite as significant as his graphic art, a number of them are, nonetheless, major works. He grew up in the provincial town of Stolp, Pomerania (now Slupsk, Poland), where he attended the Oberrealschule, until he was expelled for disobedience. From 1909 to 1911 he attended the Akademie der Künste in Dresden, where he met Kurt Günther, Bernhard Kretschmar (1889–1972) and Franz Lenk (b 1898). Under his teacher Richard Müller (1874–1954), Grosz painted and drew from plaster casts. At this time he was unaware of such avant-garde movements as Die Brücke, also active in Dresden. In 1912 he studied with Emil Orlik at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin. A year later he moved to the Académie Colarossi in Paris, where he learnt a free drawing style that swiftly reached the essence of a motif.

A cultural icon of modernism from the Weimar Republic in Germany, he was a painter and printmaker with a lasting reputation in both Berlin and New York City where he emigrated in 1932. His early style was wide ranging and incorporating of current trends. From the Futurists, he borrowed exploding perspectives; from German Expressionism, harsh, strong colors, distorted perspectives, and demi-monde themes; from Constructivism, he experimented with geometry of intersecting diagonal lines and receding planes. In 1993, a major retrospective of his work at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin marked the 100th Anniversary of his birth, and included were over 300 paintings, drawings and watercolors. From his drawings, it was apparent that he was a master draftsman. He was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1910, and studied at the Dresden Academy of Art. In 1912, he attended the School of Applied Arts in Berlin, studying with Emil Orlik. He served in the German army during World War I but was court-martialed for insubordination. From 1918 to 1932, he lived in Berlin, where he was one of the founders of the Dada Movement and styled himself an American, much to the dismay of his left-wing friends. The work he did during this period has become very popular in Germany, especially among post-war leftists, because it showed the latent fascism that can emerge if society is not vigilant. He foresaw the control of German industry over politics and the disastrous results of enforced, excessive patriotism. His satirical depictions, something he later justified as an art form, and Marxist association caused him to flee Germany. In 1932, he first went to America where he was guest instructor for two terms at the Art Students League in New York. He became a United States citizen, moving his family to Long Island, which obviously was a break with his native culture and former life. For over twenty years, he taught at the Art Students League; in 1937, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship; and in 1941, the Museum of Modern Art circulated a traveling exhibition of his work. In New York, from age 40, he turned his painting away from leading-edge avant garde to simpler perspectives and allegorical themes of cavorting nudes, using his wife, Eva, as his model, and focusing on his sexual attraction to her Rubensesque body, both maternal and arousing. He also opened an art school with Maurice Sterne and did opera stage designs. He had an open dislike for French modernism and was disdainful of the emerging Abstract Expressionism. He had difficulty establishing a style that brought attention to himself in America because the country was more focused on social problems at a time when he was turning to personal themes.

framed

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