German artist, George Grosz, best-known for his satirical caricatures.
George Grosz rose to prominence in Germany in the years following World War I. His scathing caricatures depicting the licentiousness and decadence of life in the Weimar Republic established his reputation as one of the leading satirists of his generation, and he remains a key figure of 20th century art more than 60 years since his death.
Grosz primarily painted and drew, though he also produced a number of important print series (most of which are photolithographs). Prints account for 39% of the artist’s work sold at auction, and most reach between £100 and £500, with a significant proportion reaching far higher prices.
George Grosz lived through one of the most interesting and tumultuous eras in human history; as such, it’s essential to understand some things about his life when considering his artwork. Read on to discover five things you might not have known about George Grosz.
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He Fought In World War I
George Grosz was born in Berlin in 1893. When war broke out in 1914, he signed up for military service, but he was discharged the following year with a bad sinus infection. Grosz was recalled to the army in 1917 (the same year his first print portfolio was published), but he was permanently discharged mere months later, reportedly having suffered some kind of breakdown, after which he was deemed unfit for service.
The things Grosz saw and experienced during the war had an enormous impact on his art. He was disgusted by the senseless slaughter, later writing: “I would vent my anger in drawings. I sketched what I disliked in my surroundings: the brutal faces of my fellow soldiers, angry war invalids, arrogant officers, lecherous nurses.”
The military remained a frequent target of Grosz’s ridicule; one of the best examples of this is his Gott Mit Uns series. Its depictions of the army were so savage that it prompted one of Grosz’s contemporaries to claim: “If drawings could kill, the Prussian military would be dead.”
George Grosz, Explosion, 1917
His Most Expensive Prints Sold For Nearly £46,000
Ecce Homo is an enormous series of 100 prints which was first published in the early 1920s. Its title is provocatively based on Pontius Pilate’s words upon presenting a scourged Jesus to a hostile crowd shortly before his crucifixion; they translate as ‘behold the man’.
The title is a pertinent one, as these prints are a savage attack on the bawdy decadence of the Weimar Republic. A chaotic combination of unbridled hedonism, creative experimentation, and desperate poverty, Weimar Germany gained a notorious reputation. As Grosz later recalled, “All moral codes were abandoned. A wave of vice, pornography and prostitution enveloped the whole country.” The prints are an extraordinary social critique of the era, and they remain among Grosz’s best-known; one portfolio was sold by Bukowskis in May 2023 for £45,970, setting a new record for the artist.
Ecce Homo series sold by Bukowski’s in 2023
He Was Very Left Wing
Much of George Grosz’s satirical work focuses on the pompous leaders of the Weimar Republic and the ever-increasing decadence of society, but he never forgot ordinary German citizens. His print portfolio Im Schattem (In the Shadows), for instance, depicted hordes of workers, injured soldiers, and those struggling with the crazy hyperinflation of the era.
Grosz’s left-wing leanings led him to join the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1918. He was even arrested during the 1919 Spartakus uprising, which was brutally quashed by the government, and he was horrified when the leaders of the party – Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg – were executed afterwards.
Though Grosz remained inherently left wing, he grew disillusioned with the KPD after a trip to Bolshevik Russia in 1922-23, and he ended his party membership upon his return.
His Art Got Him Into Legal Trouble
George Grosz satirised his surroundings with unflinching bravery, cutting wit, and savage black humour. To him, no target was off limits. Unsurprisingly, this led to several run-ins with the authorities. Grosz was taken to court on a number of occasions and found guilty of creating offensive artwork, including after the publication of Ecce Homo and Gott Mit Uns.
Usually, he and his publisher were fined, and sometimes artworks or printing plates would be confiscated. But despite these efforts, Grosz’s work remained popular and scathingly accurate, and it remains so one century later. As Grosz once said, “I considered any art pointless if it did not put itself at the disposal of political struggle… My art was to be a gun and a sword.”
George Grosz’s Satirical Cartoons
He Was Fascinated By America
As a child, Grosz had read books which romanticised America’s Old West through heroic characters and exciting adventures, and this never left him. As a young man who’d experienced the horrors of the First World War, America represented freedom and possibility for Grosz. In 1916, he even legally changed his name from the German spelling Georg Groß to distance himself from his birth country and to proclaim his affinity for America.
The artist’s fascination with America is evident in much of his work (including his first print portfolio, Erste George Grosz-Mappe). It was to America that Grosz escaped just before Hitler came to power, as he loathed the Nazis and recognised the potential danger he was in due to the nature of his art. Grosz stayed in America for many years, returning to Berlin in 1959, just a few weeks before his death following a drunken fall down a flight of stairs.
