TVM Basement: 20th C. European Art between the World Wars

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born: Berlin, Germany; 26 July 1893
died: Berlin, West Germany; 6 July 1959

1909	16	Studies at the Dresden Academy of Art.
1912	19	Studies at the School of Applied Art in Berlin.
1914	21	Start of WW I; Grosz does Military Service with the German Army.
1916	22	He is dismissed from the army as unsuitable. Lives for half a year in Paris studying art.
1917	24	He is recalled to the army as trainer. He is arrested as a deserter and placed in a military asylum. Makes friends with Wieland Herzfelde, the brother of the artist John Heartfield. Grosz and Herzfelde establish the publishing house Mailk Verlag. It publishes Grosz's first portfolio of drawings. Later that year, along with Herzfelde and his brother, Grosz joins the German Communist Party (KPD).
1918	25	With Huelsenbeck, Johannes Baader, and Raoul Hausmannof, Grosz open Club Dada. The first big Dada evening in Berlin is on June 12, 1917. Huelsenbeck says: I read the introductory manifesto, in which I declared that not enough people had been killed yet. The police wanted to interfere, the children cried, the men stamped their feet. Grosz urinated on the pictures of the exhibition. All in all it was a very tumultuous, and for that reason a very Dadaistic, affair. —Richard Huelsenbeck, Dada. Eine literarische Dokumentation. Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1984
1919	26	WW I ends. Grosz co-edits the magazines Der Blutige Ernst (Dead Seriously), Die Pleite (Flat Broke), and DER DADA with Wieland Herzfelde. Grosz has his first solo exhibition at the Hans Goltz Gallery, Munich.

Untitled
about 1916

Family
about 1916

Metropolis
1916-1917
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Madrid, Spain

Oh Crazy World:
You Blissful
Cabinet of Freaks
[Ecce Homo - XIV]
1916

Explosion
1917
The Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY, US

Dedicated to
Oskar Panizza
1917-18
Staatsgalerie
Stuttgart, Germany

Metropolis
1917
Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY, US

For them is
Peace Assured
1919

1920	27	Grosz helps organize the First International DADA Fair in Berlin.
1923	30	Mailk Verlag publishes Ecce Homo. Authorities charge George Grosz with defaming the public morals in Ecce Homo. This charge is based on a law that had not been invoked for centuries. Grosz is found guilty, ordered to pay a fine of 6,000 marks; 24 plates from the book are confiscated and banned from publication.
1928	35	Again he is fined for blasphemy.

Beauty, Thee I Praise [Ecce Homo - III] 1920 Nierendorf Gallery Berlin, Germany	Daum marries her Pedantic Automaton George in May 1920; John Heartfield is Very Pleased with It 1920 Galerie Nierendorf Berlin, Germany	Greetings from Saxony [Ecce Homo - 5] 1920
Self-portrait with Two Women 1920 Collection PB van Voorst van Beest The Hague, The Netherlands	Three Figures 1920 Collection PB van Voorst van Beest The Hague, The Netherlands	With Two Women about 1920 Collection PB van Voorst van Beest The Hague, The Netherlands
In Memory of Richard Wagner [Ecce Homo - 60] 1921	Ecce Homo [Ecce Homo - IV] 1921	Gray Day 1921 Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany

Passers-by [Ecce Homo - I] 1921	Waltz Dream [Ecce Homo - XIII] 1921	"I remember a song from the days of my youth" or Daddy and Mommy [Ecce Homo - V] 1922 George Grosz Estate Princeton, NJ, US
Before Sunrise [Ecce Homo - XV] 1922	Dusk [Ecce Homo - XVI] 1922 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Madrid, Spain	Dedicated to Professor Frued [Ecce Homo - XI] 1922
Orgy 1922		Sidewalk Café about 1922
Soirée [Ecce Homo - IX] 1922	Strength and Grace [Ecce Homo - VII] 1922 Wallraf-Richartz Museum Cologne, Germany	Seated Woman 1923

Street Scene - Berlin
1925

Funeral
about 1925

Street Scene
1925
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Madrid, Spain

Lovesick Man
about 1925

The Pillars of Society
1926
Staatliche Museen
Berlin, Germany

Street Scene Berlin
1930

1931	38	Grosz takes position as guest lecturer at the Art Students League in New York.
1935	42	Nazis come to power in Germany, he remains in the United States as an immigrant, and his guest lectureship at the Art Students League becomes a permanent post.
1937	44	About 285 of his "degenerate" works in German museums are confiscated by the Nazis.
1938	45	Takes American citizenship.
1941	49	Begins lectureship at Columbia University, New York.
1946	54	Grosz publishes his autobiography, A Little Yes and a big No, in 1946.
1954	61	A major retrospective exhibition is given at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1954.
1959	66	He visits West Berlin and dies there about three weeks after his arrival.

The unexpurgated version of Grosz's Ecce Homo was reprinted in the United States in 1966 by the Grove Press. It is widely available in libraries.

2003-10-04

George Grosz