The Art of Political Manifesto: George Grosz

George Grosz - Café, 1915
oil paint and charcoal on canvas

Georg Ehrenfried Groß was born in Berlin in 1893; he Americanized his name to George Grosz in 1916, out of a romantic enthusiasm for the books of James Fenimore Cooper, Bret Harte and Karl May. Grosz joined the Communist Party in 1919, but left it in 1922, as he was against any form of dictatorship. He emigrated to US in 1932 where he remained for the rest of his life (he died in 1959). Associated with the Berlin Dada and the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) group during the twenties, he remains in the art history for his political drawings, a savagely caricatural chronicle of the Weimar Republic on its most sordid chords: the sequels of the war joining the sprouts of the Nazi, everything floating on quagmires of confusion and corruption. A George Grosz exhibition is organized these days at Hirshhorn. I tried a video, hopefully it's not that bad.

(Avangarda 20)

(Hirshhorn Museum)