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Grosz, George

Last Name: Grosz
First Name: George
Dates:
*1893 (Date of Birth)
*1959 (Date of Death)
Biography/History: A cultural icon of modernism from the Weimar Republic in Germany, he was a painter and printmaker with a lasting reputation in both Berlin and New York City where he emigrated in 1932. His early style was wide ranging and incorporating of current trends. From the Futurists, he borrowed exploding perspectives; from German Expressionism, harsh, strong colors, distorted perspectives, and demi-monde themes; from Constructivism, he experimented with geometry of intersecting diagonal lines and receding planes. He was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1910, and studied at the Dresden Academy of Art. In 1912, he attended the School of Applied Arts in Berlin, studying with Emil Orlik. He served in the German army during World War I but was court-martialed for insubordination. From 1918 to 1932, he lived in Berlin, where he was one of the founders of the Dada Movement and styled himself an American, much to the dismay of his left-wing friends. The work he did during this period has become very popular in Germany, especially among post-war leftists, because it showed the latent fascism that can emerge if society is not vigilant. He foresaw the control of German industry over politics and the disastrous results of enforced, excessive patriotism. His satirical depictions, something he later justified as an art form, and Marxist association caused him to flee Germany. In 1932, he first went to America where he was guest instructor for two terms at the Art Students League in New York. He became a United States citizen, moving his family to Long Island, which obviously was a break with his native culture and former life. For over twenty years, he taught at the Art Students League; in 1937, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship; and in 1941, the Museum of Modern Art circulated a traveling exhibition of his work. In New York, from age 40, he turned his painting away from leading-edge avant garde to simpler perspectives and allegorical themes of cavorting nudes, using his wife, Eva, as his model, and focusing on his sexual attraction to her Rubensesque body, both maternal and arousing. He also opened an art school with Maurice Sterne and did opera stage designs. He had an open dislike for French modernism and was disdainful of the emerging Abstract Expressionism. He had difficulty establishing a style that brought attention to himself in America because the country was more focused on social problems at a time when he was turning to personal themes.
Related Objects:
3871.1 (Painting, Harbor Scene)