George Grosz ( German: [?? o: s] ; Georg Ehrenfried GroÃÆ'Ÿ , July 26, 1893 - July 6, 1959) was a German artist known primarily for the caricature drawings and paintings of Berlin's life in the 1920s. He is a leading member of the Berlin Dada group and the New Objectivity during the Weimar Republic. He immigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. Leaving the style and subject of his previous work, he exhibited regularly and taught for many years at the Art Students League of New York. In 1959 he returned to Berlin where he died.
Video George Grosz
Life and career
Grosz was born Georg Ehrenfried GroÃÆ'Ÿ in Berlin, Germany, son of a pub owner. His parents are very loyal Lutherans. Grosz grew up in the town of Pomeranian, Stolp (now S? Upsk, Poland), where his mother became the guardian of the local Hussars Riot riot after his father died in 1901. At the insistence of his cousin, the young Grosz began attending a weekly drawing class taught by a local painter named Grot. Grosz further develops his skills by drawing careful copies of the Eduard von GrÃÆ'¼tzner drinking scene, and by drawing imaginary battle scenes. From 1909 to 1911, he studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his teacher was Richard MÃÆ'¼ller, Robert Sterl, Raphael Wehle, and Osmar Schindler. He then studied at Berlin Arts and Crafts College under Emil Orlik.
In November 1914, Grosz volunteered for military service, in the hope that by preceding his conscription he would avoid being sent to the front. He was granted a discharge after hospitalization for sinusitis in 1915. In 1916 he changed the spelling of his name to "de-Germanise" and internationalized his name - so Georg became "George" (English spelling), while in the name of his family he substituted German " ÃÆ'Ÿ "with its phonetic equivalent" sz ". He did this in protest against German nationalism and out of romantic enthusiasm for America - the legacy of early reading of James Fenimore Cooper's books, Bret Harte and Karl May - which he maintained for the rest of his life. Friends of artist and collaborator Helmut Herzfeld also changed his name to John Heartfield at the same time.
In January 1917 Grosz was recruited for service, but in May he was dismissed for not being forever.
In the last months of 1918, Grosz joined the Spartacist League, which was renamed the German Communist Party (KPD) in December 1918. He was arrested during the Spartacus uprising in January 1919, but fled using false identity documents. In 1921, Grosz was accused of insulting the army, which resulted in 300 German Mark Fine and the destruction of the collection of Gott mit uns (/God with us), an allusion to German society. In 1928, he was prosecuted for religious blasphemy after publishing anticleric pictures, such as those depicting prisoners under the attack of a minister who spewed grenades and weapons into them, and others pointed out that Christ was forced into a soldier. According to historian David Nash, Grosz "publicly declared that he was neither Christian nor pacifist, but actively motivated by the inner need to make these photographs", and was finally released after two appeals. Instead, in 1942, Time magazine identified Grosz as a pacifist.
In 1922 Grosz traveled to Russia with author Martin Andersen NexÃÆ'¸. Upon their arrival in Murmansk they were briefly seized as spies; After their credentials were approved, they were allowed to meet with Grigory Zinoviev, Anatoly Lunacharsky, and Vladimir Lenin. The six-month Grosz presence in the Soviet Union made him uncomfortable by what he saw. He ended his membership in the KPD in 1923, though his political position changed slightly.
With bitter anti-Nazi, Grosz left Germany shortly before Hitler came to power. In June 1932, he accepted an invitation to teach a summer semester at the Art Students League of New York. In October 1932, Grosz returned to Germany, but on January 12, 1933, he and his family emigrated to the United States. Grosz became a naturalized United States citizen in 1938, and made his home in Bayside, New York. In the 1930s he taught at the Art Students League, where one of his students was Romare Bearden, who was influenced by the style of collage. He taught at the Art Students League intermittently until 1955.
In America, Grosz is determined to make a clean break with his past, and change his style and subject. He continues to show regularly, and in 1946 he published his autobiography, A Little Yes and Big No . In the 1950s he opened a private art school at his home and also worked as an Artist at Residence at the Des Moines Art Center. Grosz was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician in 1950. In 1954 he was elected to the American Academy of Art and Literature. Although he had US citizenship, he decided to return to Berlin, and moved there in May 1959. He died there on July 6, 1959, from the impact of falling down stairs after a night of drinking.
Maps George Grosz
Work
Although Grosz made his first oil painting in 1912 while still a student, his earliest identifiable oil today dates from 1916. In 1914, Grosz worked in a style influenced by Expressionism and Futurism, as well as by popular illustrations, graffiti, and pictures of children. Sharply outlined forms are often treated as if they are transparent. The City (1916-17) was the first of many of his paintings on modern urban landscapes. Other examples include the apocalyptic explosion (1917), Metropolis (1917), and The Funeral , a 1918 painting depicting a mad funeral procession.
In his drawings, usually in the form of pens and inks that are sometimes further developed with watercolors, Grosz does much to create the image of most of Berlin and the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Corrupt businessmen, wounded soldiers, prostitutes, sex crimes and orgies are great subjects (for example, see Fit for Active Service). His paper is very good although his best-known works adopt a form of caricatures that are deliberately made outright. oeuvre includes some absurd works, such as Remember Uncle August An Unsatisfied Inventor that has buttons sewn, and also includes a number of erotic artworks.
After emigration to the United States in 1933, Grosz "sharply rejected his previous work, and caricatures in general." Instead of his previous corrosive vision in the city, he now paints conventional naked pictures and landscapes of many watercolors. More spicy works, such as Kain, or Hitler in Hell (1944), are exceptions. In his autobiography, he wrote: "Many who have frozen inside me in Germany melt here in America and I rediscover my old longing to paint, I carefully and deliberately destroy some of my past." Although the softening of his style has been seen since the late 1920s, Grosz's work has a sentimental tone in America, a change that is generally seen as a setback. His late work never achieved the critical success of his Berlin years.
From 1947 to 1959, George Grosz lived in Huntington, New York, where he taught painting in the Huntington Township Art League. It was said by the locals that he used what was his most famous painting, Eclipse of the Sun , to pay for car repair bills, in relative shots. The painting was later bought by house painter Tom Constantine to pay off the $ 104.00 debt. The Heckscher Art Museum in Huntington bought the painting in 1968 for $ 15,000.00, raising money with a public subscription. Like Eclipse of the Sun depicting the warming of weapons factories, this painting became the goal of the Viet Nam War protesters at Heckscher Park (where the museum is located) in the late 1960s and early 70s.
In 2006, Heckscher proposed the sale of Eclipse of the Sun on his assessment when it was about $ 19,000,000.00 to pay for the repair and renovation of the building. There is public condemnation that the museum decided not to sell, and announced plans to create a special space for displaying paintings in a museum that has been renovated.
Inheritance and property
Grosz's art influences other New Objective artists such as Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Anton RÃÆ'¤derscheidt, and Georg Scholz. In the United States, artists are influenced by his work including social realists Ben Shahn and William Gropper.
In 1960, Grosz became the subject of Oscar-nominated short film George Grosz 'Interregnum . He is figured as "Fritz Falke" in Arthur R.G. Novel Solmssen Daughter in Berlin (1980). In 2002, actor Kevin McKidd described Grosz in a supporting role as an eager artist looking for exposure at Max , about Adolf Hitler's youth.
The Grosz estate filed a lawsuit in 1995 against Manhattan art dealer Serge Sabarsky, arguing that Sabarsky had seized the appropriate compensation rights for the sale of hundreds of Grosz's works he had acquired. In the lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court in Manhattan, Grosz's estate claims that Sabarsky secretly earned 440 Grosz for himself, mainly drawings and watercolors produced in Germany in the 1910s and 20s. The lawsuit was settled in the summer of 2006.
In 2003 the Grosz family started a legal battle against the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, requesting that three paintings be returned. According to the documents, the paintings were sold to the Nazis after Grosz fled the country in 1933. The museum never settled claims, arguing that the three-year restriction law in bringing such claims has expired. It has been well documented that the Nazis stole thousands of paintings during World War II and many heirs of German painters continue to struggle against powerful museums to regain such works.
Boy George Grosz is a jazz guitarist, Marty Grosz.
Quotes
- My Pictures express my despair, hatred and disappointment, I attract drunks; men vomiting; man with a cursed fist cursing the moon.... I drew a man, a face full of fear, washed the blood from his hand... I pulled a lonely little man who escaped wildly through the empty streets. I draw a cross section of the tenement: through one window can be seen a man attacked his wife; through the other, two people make love; from a third hanging suicide with the body covered by a full flies. I draw a soldier without a nose; crippling war with steel arms like crustaceans; two medical soldiers put a rough infantry soldier into the sheath of a jacket made from a horse blanket... I drew a dressing frame as a worker being examined for military duty. I also write poetry. - George Grosz
See also
- Jedermann sein eigner Fussball , art book by George Grosz and John Heartfield
- Assoziation revolutionÃÆ'¤rer bildender KÃÆ'¼nstler, German artist association
- List of German painters
Note
References
- Grosz, George (1946). A Little Yes and Big No . New York: Dial Press.
- Kranzfelder, Ivo (2005). George Grosz . Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBNÃ, 3-8228-0891-1
- Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). New Objectivity . Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBNÃ, 3-8228-9650-0
- Sabarsky, Serge, editor (1985). George Grosz: The Berlin Years . New York: Rizzoli. ISBNÃ, 0-8478-0668-5
- Schmied, Wieland (1978). Neue Sachlichkeit and the German Realism of the Twenties . London: The Arts Council of Great Britain. ISBNÃ, 0-7287-0184-7
- 'Peter M. Grosz,' obituary of George Grosz's son, New York Times, October 7, 2006.
- Walker, B., Zieve, K., & amp; Brooklyn Museum. (1988). Prints from German expressionists and their circles: Brooklyn Museum Collection . New York: Brooklyn Museum. ISBN: 0872731154
External links
- Grosz's collection of paintings
- Ten Dream Gallery
- Mario Vargas Llosa to George Grosz in the TATE ETC magazine. Spring 2007
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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