George Grosz

George Grosz (1893-1959), German American expressionist painter and illustrator. Born in Berlin, he studied art at the Royal Academy, Dresden, the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, and the Académie Colarossi, Paris, and served in the army in World War I (1914-1918). He is known for his fiercely satirical drawings and caricatures. Collections of these drawings, concerned with conditions in Germany at the end of World War I, appeared in Ecce homo (Behold the Man, 1923) and Das Gesicht der Herrschenden Klasse (The Face of the Ruling Class, 1921). Republican Automatons (1920) reflects his view of modern man as a machine.

An uncompromising opponent of militarism and National Socialism, Grosz was one of the first German artists to attack Adolf Hitler. Grosz went to the United States in 1932 and became a citizen in 1938. From about 1936 he began to work also in oils and turned to less biting themes, depicting nudes, still lifes and street scenes. With the approach of World War II (1939-1945) his art became increasingly despairing. Recognized as one of the most brilliant draftsmen of his time, Grosz was also well known as a teacher. An account of his experiences as an artist appears in his autobiography A Little Yes and a Big No (1946). He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954, and in 1959, shortly before his death, resettled in Berlin.