George Grosz- Berlin street scene





ARTIST
George Grosz
Date: 1893–1959
Date:1931
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 32 x 23 5/8 in. (81.3 x 60 cm)
Classification: Paintings


Biography:

Draftsman and painter George Grosz is known for his caustic pen-and-ink caricatures of Weimar Germany. Influenced by Expressionism and Futurism in his early career, he was also strongly affected by his wartime experience and joined Berlin's Dada movement in 1918 as a stance of political commitment; he is also associated with the New Objectivity movement (Neue Sachlichkeit). After leaving Germany prior to Hitler's assumption of power, Grosz turned to romanticized nudes, New York cityscapes, and watercolor landscapes in a departure from his earlier social engagement.

(https://www.artsy.net/artist/george-grosz)


Statement:
"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another … And all men my age, here and over there, throughout the world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me … What will happen afterwards? And what shall come of us?"

(http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1114&context=gvjh)(Ocwieja, Jeff Michael (2014) "Art as Political Struggle: George Grosz and the Experience of the Great War,"Grand Valley Journal of History: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 2. Available at:http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gvjh/vol3/iss2/2)
My Connection:
George Grosz was a German artist and member of the New objectivity movement. His renditions of the daily life in Germany were generally satirical with underlaying political and social themes. Grosz was a self- proclaimed pessimist when it came to the direction the world was taking.

The caricature style of his subjects are not always the most flattering. This one comes off a bit scathing. Perhaps a critique of society at the time. The fashionable man and woman taking a minute to flirt as they pass eachother while the old man in tattery clothes holds out a hand for money. The signs behind them give the scene placement and context.

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