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Spaightwood Galleries
120 Main Street, Upton MA 01568-6193; 800-809-3343
George Grosz (German, 1893-1958): Dunes and Grass and Ecce Homo
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In 1912 Grosz settled in Berlin and lived in the suburb of Charlottenburg. . . . Grosz was fascinated by amusement parks and the circus, and he particularly loved clowns. He saw them as playing the same tragicomic role that the artist was forced to act on a bourgeois society. Grosz used his art of the early Berlin years to attack the self-contentedness of the bourgeois, primarily its plutocrats, during the German Empire. He anticipated the far in advance the disillusionment and shock of World War I as well as the change in art and society brought by the chaos of 1918. . . . Grosz’s paintings depicted modern city life with its desire, passions, and crimes. For Grosz, the chaos of the big city reflected the amorality of man. His basic attitude was totally pessimistic. By disregarding the laws of perspective, Grosz’s paintings represented a world falling into pieces. The sexual explicitness in his drawings matched the perverted knowledge of a precocious youth. Despite his distaste for anything romantic, one cannot fail to notice rather poetic moons and stars shining above city streets. The next year he made his first trip to Paris and lived there for 9 months. During that time he studied at Atelier of Colarossi and met Jules Pascin, whose works greatly impressed him. The outbreak of World War I, however, interrupted their friendship. In 1914 Grosz entered military service as a volunteer. After 6 months he was dismissed due to a severe sinus infection. Shortly after that he published his first portfolio. In 1918 Grosz returned to Berlin even more convinced of society's insanity. At that time he made violently anti-war drawings, and drawings and paintings attacking the social corruption of Germany, including capitalists, prostitutes, the Prussian military caste and the middle class. Together with John Heartfield, master of the political photomontage, and his brother Wieland, Grosz produced a cartoon film, which unfortunately is lost today. They had been commissioned to make a war propaganda film for Germany; instead they turned into its opposite. In fact, Grosz considered himself a propagandist of the social revolution. He not only depicted victims of the catastrophe of the W.W.I—the disabled, crippled, and mutilated—he also portrayed the collapse of the capitalist society and its values. His wartime line drawings show him to be a master of caricature.
In 1918 Grosz joined the German Communist Party; in 1919 he became a leading member of the Berlin DADA movement. At that time he made DADA collages, partly in collaboration with John Heartfield. In German Expressionist Prints and Drawings Vol. I: Essays (Los Angeles: LA County Museum, 1989), Alexander Dückers observes that "Once Grosz came to see the appearance of things as a masquerade, he dissolved the static unity of place and time and came close to the pictorial formula developed by the Futurists, who had exhibited in Berlin as early as April 1912: reality is captured not by a static, framed section of the visual field, but by the representation of moving objects occurring simultaneously in different places" (87-88). Like medieval narrative paintings or the sculptures of Alberto Giacometti, Grosz's 1921 offset lithographs for Die Abenteuer Des Herren Tartarin Aus Tarascon present a crowded field on which characters move or dream surrounded by other people or their thoughts but without any overt interaction. The consequences of his attempts to show the truth behind the masquerade of bourgeois life in postwar Germany were serious: Grosz was prosecuted and persecuted for slander and blasphemy. 1923 saw both the publication of his portfolio Ecco Homo and its confiscation for offending public morals. Ecce Homo (1923) was found to be a slanderous attack upon the army, which won damages and the plates for the portfolio in a law suit. Grosz's personal attack upon Hitler in 1925 made his decision to leave Germany inevitable. History, however, has vindicated Grosz. Condemned by the Nazis as a "Degenerate" artist, his works are now in the collections of most major museums in the US and Europe.
Selected Bibliography: Alexander Dückers, George Grosz: Das druckgraphische Werk (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1979); Kay Flavell, George Grosz: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Frank Gettings, George Grosz - The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection ( Washington DC: Smithsonian, 1978); George Grosz, A Small Yes and a Big No: The Autobiography of George Grosz (London: Allison & Busby, 1982); Hans Hess, George Grosz (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Hedy B. Landman, Theatrical Drawings and Watercolors by George Grosz (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1973); Beth Irwin Lewis, George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971); Barbara McCloskey, George Grosz and the Communist Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Serge Sabarsky, George Grosz: The Berlin Years (NY: Rizzoli, 1985); Uwe M. Schneede, George Grosz: His life and work (London: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1979).
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Dunes and Grass (Duckers E 109 II). 200 impressions on rag paper signed lower right and published by the Art Students League of NY, where Grosz taught after coming to the US. Grosz left Germany immediately after the Nazis took power, leaving several days before the Gestapo raided his apartment and studio, seizing and destroying all the works he had left behind. Besides showing widely, Grosz took a job teaching at the Art Students League on 57th St. in New York City. Summers, his wife, and their two sons summered on Cape Cod from 1949 on. An intense work that conveys a rather sexualized landscape in the tradition of German Expressionissm. Image size: 252x325mm. Proce: $3750.
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Jugendzeit / Halcyon Days (Duckers S1-3, Davis-Rifkind 952: 3). Offset lithograph for Ecce Homo, 1922. Our impression from the unsigned Ausgabe C of the first edition of Ecce Homo (Berlin, 1923). The image seems to depict Freud making notes while thinking about naked women he has known. Image size: 277x160mm. Price: $475.
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Ausgang / Time off (Duckers S1-81, Davis-Rifkind 952: 81). Offset lithograph for Ecce Homo, 1921. Our impression from the unsigned Ausgabe C of the first edition of Ecce Homo (Berlin, 1923). Image size: 270x177mm. Price: SOLD
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Head of the household (Duckers S1-29, Davis-Rifkind 952: 29). Offset lithograph for Ecce Homo, 1922. Our impression from the unsigned Ausgabe C of the first edition of Ecce Homo (Berlin, 1923). Image size: 270x200mm. Price: SOLD.
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Krach / Quarrel (Duckers S1-69, Davis-Rifkind 952: 69). Offset lithograph for Ecce Homo, 1921. Our impression from the unsigned Ausgabe C of the first edition of Ecce Homo (Berlin, 1923). Image size: 271x201mm. Price: SOLD.
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Sonntag fruh / Sunday Morning (Duckers S1-78, Davis-Rifkind 952: 78). Offset lithograph for Ecce Homo, 1922. Our impression from the unsigned Ausgabe C of the first edition of Ecce Homo (Berlin, 1923). Image size: 275x208mm. Price: $475.
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Hahn im Korbe / Cock of the walk (Duckers S1-30, Davis-Rifkind 952: 30). Offset lithograph for Ecce Homo, 1921. Our impression from the unsigned Ausgabe C of the first edition of Ecce Homo (Berlin, 1923). Image size: 221x198mm. Price: $475.
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Spaightwood Galleries, Inc.
To purchase, call us at 1-800-809-3343 (508-529-2511 in Upton MA & vicinity) or send an email to sptwd@verizon.net. We accept AmericanExpress, DiscoverCard, MasterCard, and Visa.
For directions and visiting information, please call. We are, of course, always available over the web and by telephone (see above for contact information). Click the following for links to past shows and artists. For a visual tour of the gallery, please click here. For information about Andy Weiner and Sonja Hansard-Weiner, please click here. For a list of special offers currently available, see Specials.
Visiting hours: Noon to six Saturdays and Sundays; other times by arrangement.
Please call to confirm your visit. Browsers and guests are welcome.
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