George Grosz, 1936 Lithograph Interregnum, Cigar, Kid w Toy Gun, Small Edition Weimar Germany, 1936

Description

Hand lithography on BFK Rives French hand moulded paper Style: German New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit)
According to the frontis these … more Hand lithography on BFK Rives French hand moulded paper Style: German New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit)
According to the frontis these were produced by Hand Lithography. According to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA NY) website "Edition:300 announced; only approx. 42 issued (including regular edition of 30, deluxe edition of approx. 10, and 2 artist's proofs)" I believe these are from the deluxe edition as they are on Mould made BFK Rives French paper and the dimensions are larger than stated in the MOMA website. The sheet size here is 40X29 cm. Date 1936. Publisher:Black Sun Press, New York. Printer: George C. Miller & Son, New York. most of them are plate signed.
George Grosz (July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his Satire and Caricature drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic before he emigrated to the United States in 1933. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Richard Müller, Robert Sterl, and Oskar Schindler. He subsequently studied at the Berlin College of Arts and Crafts under Emil Orlik. Grosz left the Communist Party KPD in 1922 after having spent five months in Russia and meeting Lenin and Trotsky, because of his antagonism to any form of dictatorial authority. Along with Otto Dix, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.
Bitterly anti Nazi, Grosz left Germany shortly before Hitler came to power. In June 1932, he accepted an invitation to teach the 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 America.
In 1946 he published his autobiography, A Little Yes and a Big No. In the 1950s he opened a private art school at his home and also worked as Artist in Residence at the Des Moines Art Center. Grosz was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician in 1950. In 1954 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Grosz worked in a style influenced by Expressionism and Futurism, as well as by popular illustration, graffiti, and children's drawings.The City (1916–17) was the first of his many paintings of the modern urban scene. 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 pen and ink which he sometimes developed further with watercolor, Grosz did much to create the image most have of Berlin and the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Corpulent businessmen, wounded soldiers, prostitutes, sex crimes and orgies were his great subjects His draftsmanship was excellent although the works for which he is best known adopt a deliberately crude form of caricature. His oeuvre includes a few absurdist works, and also includes a number of erotic artworks. ("Ecce Homo" which saw him accused of pornography)
My Drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment, I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon. ... I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands ... I drew lonely little men fleeing madly through empty streets. I drew a cross-section of tenement house: through one window could be seen a man attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; from a third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. I drew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-like steel arms; two medical soldiers putting a violent infantryman into a strait-jacket made of a horse blanket ... I drew a skeleton dressed as a recruit being examined for military duty. I also wrote poetry. —Grosz In 1940 the Museum of Modern Art in New York shows a retrospective of his work which later tours through the United States. In 1946, the AAA Gallery, New York hosts an exhibition titled A Piece of My World in a World without Peace. Later the Dallas Museum of Arts shows several works by Grosz titled Impressions of Dallas and also the Whitney Museum, New York shows retrospective works.
George Grosz's art influenced other New Objectivity artists such as Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Anton Räderscheidt, and Georg Scholz. In the United States, the artists influenced by his work included the social realists Ben Shahn and William Gropper. less