- “I wanted to protest against this world of mutual destruction...I saw heroism, but it seemed to be blind...what I saw more was misery, stupidity, hunger, cowardice and horror.”(1) Georg Grosz, 1930
By Rob Ruggenberg
Of all the artists who served as soldiers in the Great War, George Grosz stands out as one whose life was really incredible.
George Grosz was born in Berlin in 1893. On the outbreak of the First World War he volunteered for the German Army. In 1915 he was released as unfit for duty. However, in 1917, desperate for soldiers, Grosz was conscripted again. Kept from frontline action, he had to transport and guard Prisoners of War.
After trying to
commit suicide in 1917, Grosz was sent to an army hospital. Then he was
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The Hero
Lithograph, 16 x 11 ˝”, c. 1936
After the war Grosz became a famous expressionist painter (DaDa-movement) and he was a leading anti-Nazi activist.
“Art is in danger”, he wrote. “Today’s artist, unless he wants to be useless, an antiquated misfit, can only choose between technology or class war propaganda. In both cases he must give up pure art. Either he joins the ranks of architects, engineers, and ad men who develop industrial strength and who exploit the world, or he, as depictor and critic of the face of our time, as propagandist and defender of the revolutionary ideas and its followers, enters into the army of the oppressed who fight for their just share of the worth of the world and for a sensible social organization of life.”
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Jesus Christ "Keep your mouth shut and do your duty"
A great deal of fuss arose when he published a shocking portrayal of Jesus Christ wearing a gas mask and army boots with the caption ,"Keep your mouth shut and do your duty" in 1924 in an album titled Hintergrund (Backdrop). The images in this album are of utter loneliness and despair. They not only depict the brutal reality of human condition, but also its radical hopelessness. Charged with blasphemy, Grosz was at first found guilty but was then acquitted in 1932 during an appeal.
The Nazi's despised him. The Hannoverischer Courier wrote: “Among Germans who have a healthy, natural sense of judgment - experts as well as laymen - the artistic talents of Herr Grosz will find themselves much less esteemed. Grosz is a skillful political agitator, who uses his pencil, rather than words, for his propaganda. He does not belong on the side of German artists, but with Bolshevists or rather nihilist politicians.”
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George Grosz. Cain, or, Hitler in Hell. 1944. Oil on canvas. 99 x 124.5 cm. Private collection.
NO more communism
Grosz spent six months in Soviet Russia, meeting Soviet notables and observing the Proletariat Dictatorship firsthand. Disillusioned by what he had seen, he became gradually estranged from his left wing compatriots, devoting more of his energies criticizing totalitarianism in all its fronts. In 1933 his former communist friends branded him a “petty-bourgeois traitor and renegade”.
Neverthelesss, the Nazi's came after him and in 1933, after being harassed by Hitler's Gestapo, Grosz fled to the USA. Here he tried to start a new life, but his war experiences did not stop haunting him - see the oil painting The Wanderer above and his drawing The Hero
In an interview he said: “I start to paint a nude, sun, dunes, Arcadia, and grass, a good fine imagination... but alas, the more I go on with my work, it changes and all of a sudden there is fire and ruins and mud and grim debris all over... as if somebody more knowing and utterly destructive is leading me on.”
He was not happy in the USA. The society that had prompted his earlier work, Weimar Germany and the Nazi Party, had confiscated and destroyed his works and revoked his citizenship; in his new land, it was inferred, Grosz was lost and his art with him.
He returned to
Germany in 1959, saying "My American dream turned out to be a soap
bubble", and died the same year.
George Grosz,
The Autobiography of George Grosz (1955)
In those days (after the
First World War) we were all Dadaists. If the word meant anything at
all, it meant seething discontent, dissatisfaction and cynicism. Defeat
and political ferment always give rise to that sort of movement.
We held Dadaist meetings, charged a few marks admission and did nothing
but tell people the truth, that is, abuse them. The news spread quickly
and soon our meetings were sold out, crammed with people wanting to be
scandalized or just after fun.
Between insults we performed "art", but the performances were as a rule
interrupted. Thus hardly would Walter Mehring begin to rattle away at
his typewriter while reciting some piece or other of his own
composition, when Heartfield or Hausmann would come out from behind the
stage and yell: "Stop! You're not trying to bamboozle that feeble-minded
lot down there, are you?"
Dada - An early twentieth century art movement which ridiculed contemporary culture and traditional art forms. The movement was formed to prove the bankruptcy of existing style of artistic expression rather than to promote a particular style itself. It was born as a consequence of the collapse during World War I of social and moral values which had developed to that time. Dada artists produced works which were nihilistic or reflected a cynical attitude toward social values, and, at the same time, irrational — absurd and playful, emotive and intuitive, and often cryptic. Less a style than a zeitgeist, Dadaists typically produced art objects in unconventional forms produced by unconventional methods. Several artists employed the chance results of accident as a means of production, for instance. Literally, the word dada means several things in several languages: it's French for "hobbyhorse" and Slavic for "yes yes." Some authorities say that the name Dada is a nonsensical word chosen at random from a dictionary.
Many artists associated with this movement later became associated with Surrealism. Many other movements have been influenced by Dada, including Pop Art and Fluxus.
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- Nudo femminile 1939
- Olio si carta intelata 48,3 X 65
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- Akrobaten, um 1916, 26 x 18,5 cm, Tuschfeder auf Papier
