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George GroszLarge George Grosz 1923 Lithograph Die Rauber German Expressionism WPA Realism 1922-1923
1922-1923
About the Item
From The robbers. lithographs by George Grosz for the drama of the same name.
photolithography on watermarked paper. 19 X 25.5 inches (sheet size). This is not hand signed or numbered in pecil.
Limited edition. Berlin, Malik-Verlag, 1923.
Dückers MV, 1-9
This listing is just for the one lithograph, the folio cover photos are just included for provenance and is not included in this sale.
The portfolio is based on pen and ink drawings that were transferred using photolithography for printing. Schiller's "Räuber" served as a template, which Grosz transferred to his time and updated with drawings. With sharp polemics, he brings together the types of society and draws attention to social grievances: Financial disparity, robber barons with piles of money etc. according to the military chaplain, who blesses the disaster of war that has already happened; the well-fed manufacturers who gamble in the presence of the unemployed for the money they lack; or the hollow-faced creature begging a bounty from the richly set table of the bronze.
Expressionismus Grosz, George
Die Räuber: Neun Lithographien zu Sentenzen aus Schillers Räuber. Lithographien von George Grosz. Berlin, Der Malik-Verlag, 1922.
George Grosz (July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his Satire and Caricature drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic before he emigrated to the United States in 1933. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Richard Müller, Robert Sterl, and Oskar Schindler. He subsequently studied at the Berlin College of Arts and Crafts under Emil Orlik. Grosz left the Communist Party KPD in 1922 after having spent five months in Russia and meeting Lenin and Trotsky, because of his antagonism to any form of dictatorial authority. Along with Otto Dix, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.
Bitterly anti Nazi, Grosz left Germany shortly before Hitler came to power. In June 1932, he accepted an invitation to teach the summer semester at the Art Students League of New York. In October 1932, Grosz returned to Germany, but on January 12, 1933 he and his family emigrated to America.
In 1946 he published his autobiography, A Little Yes and a Big No. In the 1950s he opened a private art school at his home and also worked as Artist in Residence at the Des Moines Art Center. Grosz was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician in 1950. In 1954 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Grosz worked in a style influenced by Expressionism and Futurism, as well as by popular illustration, graffiti, and children's drawings.The City (1916–17) was the first of his many paintings of the modern urban scene. Other examples include the apocalyptic Explosion (1917), Metropolis (1917), and The Funeral, a 1918 painting depicting a mad funeral procession.
In his drawings, usually in pen and ink which he sometimes developed further with watercolor, Grosz did much to create the image most have of Berlin and the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Corpulent businessmen, wounded soldiers, prostitutes, sex crimes and orgies were his great subjects His draftsmanship was excellent although the works for which he is best known adopt a deliberately crude form of caricature. His oeuvre includes a few absurdist works, and also includes a number of erotic artworks. ("Ecce Homo" which saw him accused of pornography)
My Drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment, I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon. ... I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands ... I drew lonely little men fleeing madly through empty streets. I drew a cross-section of tenement house: through one window could be seen a man attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; from a third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. I drew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-like steel arms; two medical soldiers putting a violent infantryman into a strait-jacket made of a horse blanket ... I drew a skeleton dressed as a recruit being examined for military duty. I also wrote poetry. —Grosz In 1940 the Museum of Modern Art in New York shows a retrospective of his work which later tours through the United States. In 1946, the AAA Gallery, New York hosts an exhibition titled A Piece of My World in a World without Peace. Later the Dallas Museum of Arts shows several works by Grosz titled Impressions of Dallas and also the Whitney Museum, New York shows retrospective works.
George Grosz's art influenced other New Objectivity artists such as Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Anton Räderscheidt, and Georg Scholz. In the United States, the artists influenced by his work included the social realists Ben Shahn and William Gropper.
- Creator:George Grosz (1891-1969, German)
- Creation Year:1922-1923
- Dimensions:Height: 25.5 in (64.77 cm)Width: 19 in (48.26 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:good, minor wear. please see photos.
- Gallery Location:Surfside, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU38212492202
George Grosz
George Grosz was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic. Grosz studied drawing at the Dresden Academy (1909–11) and at the School of Arts and Crafts in Berlin (1912–14). He was in the army from 1914–15, and again for a short time in 1917, but spent the rest of the war in Berlin, where he made violently anti-war drawings, in which his main focus was attacking the social corruption of Germany (capitalists, prostitutes, the Prussian military caste, the middle class). His artworks had great impact in the Berlin Dada movement, 1917–20, and collaborated with John Heartfield and Raoul Hausmann in the invention of photomontage.
Many of Grosz’s drawings were published in albums (Gott mit uns, Ecce Homo, Der Spiesser-Spiegel, etc.), and he was subject to prosecutions for insulting the army and blasphemy. He visited the United States in 1932 to teach at the Art Students League, New York, and settled there in 1933. In the latter part of his career, he tried to establish himself as a pure painter of landscapes and still life, but also painted many compositions of an apocalyptic and deeply pessimistic kind. His role in the Berlin Dada movement affected political outlooks and artistic developments not only in Germany, but also in Russia, the Balkan nations, and parts of France.
Grosz's penetrating, darkly humorous style of drawing and his use of satire as a weapon left a deep impression on the work of his contemporaries and the artists of the next generation. Some of his works from the early 1940s, particularly during World War II, do present an allegorical and dramatic representation of Grosz's moral perspective regarding war. Additionally, some of his last pieces from 1958 were photomontages, and hearken back to his earlier Dadaist aesthetic and message, passing judgment upon consumerism and suggesting that his absorption with American culture had ended in disappointment. In 1959, Grosz sold his house and moved back to Berlin. He died shortly after his return, after a fall down the stairs.
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