|
|
|
George Grosz
's works |
|
|
| Biography: |
|
Grosz, George
(1893-1959)
Georg Ehrenfried Gross was born on 26 July 1893 in Berlin into the family of Karl Ehrenfried Gross, an innkeeper, and his wife Marie Wilhelmine Luise. When the boy was only seven years old his father died. Together with his mother he lived alternately in Berlin and Stolp in Pomerania, where Georg started secondary school in 1902. In 1908 he was expelled from school for having returned a trainee teacher's blow.
After passing the entrance exam he began his studies at the Royal Academy of Art in Dresden. While in the Academy he specialized in graphic art and started to co-operate with satirical magazines as early as 1910. In 1912 Grosz (then Gross) joined the graphic art course at the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin. In 1913 he spent several months in Paris at Colarossi's studio. The main subjects of his drawings of the period are crimes and orgies, erotic subjects; his cartoons find publication in "Ulk", "Lustige Bl?tter" and other periodicals. He also did his first book illustrations and began painting in oils.
With the outbreak of the First World War he volunteered, but was discharged from the army several months later following a surgical operation. During this period in Berlin Gross met various authors, artists and intellectuals, among them those with whom he would found the Berlin Dada in 1917.
In 1916 the artist in protest against nationalism and patriotism altered his name to George Grosz. The same year he painted the earliest of his oils known, among them Lovesick and Suicide and a year later he published his first two albums, the "Erste George Grosz Mappe" and "Kleine Grosz Mappe".
Following the revolution in Russia, an artists' association, the "November Group" was established in Berlin in 1918, and Grosz joined it, soon after becoming a member of the Communist Party. In 1919, with the publisher Wieland Herzfelde (of Malik Publishing House), he started a magazine called "Die Pleite", and collaborated with Franz Jung on "Jedermann sein eigener Fussball" (Everybody his own football) and with John Hoexter and Carl Einstein on "Der blutige Ernst" (The bloody seriousness). His drawings, tartly critical of bourgeois society, appeared in various Malik publications; the artist also produced portfolios and books, which regularly aroused scandals.
In 1921 his album "Gott mit uns" (God with us) brought Grosz charges of defaming the Reichswehr (army); in 1924 he was prosecuted for offences against public morality by his album "Ecce Homo" (the album was confiscated as being pornographic); in 1928 for his drawing "Shut up and keep serving the cause" he was accused of blasphemy. All these scandals only helped consolidate his fame.
In 1924 the artist became chairman of the artists' association "Rote Gruppe" (Red Group); until 1927 he was a.... |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[1] [2] |
|
