Grosz, George (grōs), 1893–1959, German-American caricaturist, draughtsman, and painter, b. Berlin. Before and during World War I he contributed drawings on proletarian themes to Illustration and other German periodicals. He was associated with the Dada group at that time. In postwar Germany, Grosz was famous for his vitriolic, satirical drawings attacking the corruption of German bourgeois society. On three occasions he was brought to trial by the state for allegedly defaming public morals and for blasphemy. In his caricatures he evoked a nightmare world, an inferno, made credible with a few jagged pen-and-ink lines. In 1924, Grosz began to paint, and in 1933 he accepted a position as art instructor at the Art Students League, New York City. He became a U.S. citizen in 1938. At first the fiery work of his German period was supplanted by a more traditional rendering of figures and landscapes. However, World War II impelled him to create a symbolic series of ravaged figures. His drawing Street Scene (Philadelphia Mus. of Art) is characteristic. Other works are at the Museum of Modern Art. Two collections of his drawings were published in 1944.

Bibliography

See his autobiography, A Little Yes and a Big No (tr. 1946) and Ecce Homo (new ed. 1966); biographies by H. Hess (1985) and M. K. Flavell (1988).

Grosz, George

orig. Georg Grosz

(born July 26, 1893, Berlin, W.Ger.—died July 6, 1959, West Berlin) German-born U.S. painter, draftsman, and illustrator. After studying art in Dresden and Berlin, he began selling caricatures to magazines. During World War I he served in the German army; discharged as unfit in 1917, he moved into a garret studio in Berlin, and by the end of the war he had developed a graphic style that combined a highly expressive use of line with ferocious social satire. His depictions of war and depravity provided some of the most vitriolic social criticism of his time. From 1918 to 1920 he was a prominent member of the Dada group in Berlin. His Face of the Ruling Class (1921) and Ecce Homo (1922), collections of drawings featuring greedy capitalists, war profiteering, and social decadence, earned him an international reputation. In 1932 he immigrated to the U.S., where he taught at New York's Art Students League while continuing to produce magazine cartoons, nudes, and landscapes.

Grosz, George (1893–1959) graphic artist, painter; born in Berlin, Germany. He studied art in Dresden and Berlin and served in the German army in World War I. After years of producing drawings that bitterly satirized middle-class complacency, militarism, and Nazism, he emigrated to New York City in 1932, eventually establishing his studio on Long Island. Early associated with Dadaism, the movement that embraced the absurdity of life, he became known as the printmaker and painter who was a sophisticated realist; his later oils were more symbolic in nature. In 1959 he returned to Berlin where he died.