George Grosz (1893–1959)

George Grosz was the quintessential artist of Berlin in the 20s, skewering everyone and everything around him, from the plutocrats driving the country to ruin to the beggars scraping for survival on the street. But sadly, the fire that made him such a strong artist had been dampened by the time he wrote this book. His new life in America was defined by the compromises he had to make to pay the bills and provide for his family, and you can feel his sense of defeat. The chapters on the German show more revolution of 1918 and his involvement with Dada in the 20s leaves you wishing you could have heard him before his anger had metastasized into bitterness. show less

Published on the occasion of the exhibition, curated by Birgit Möckel and Rosa von der Schulenburg, which presented around 100 works from the art collection and archive of the Akademie der Künste, from the George Grosz Estate as well as from public and private collections.

Original, Playful and Satirical Artworks
The title "A Piece of My World in a World Without Peace" had already been used for a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work in New York in 1946 which features works from the show more beginning of the First World War to the end of the Second World War. These early photomontages with graphic elements are evidence of Grosz's artistic and political co-operation with John Heartfield and Wieland Herzfelde's Malik publishing house. Today, they still strike viewers as original, humorously playful and at the same time satirically accurate commentaries on "life and hustle and bustle" in the rapidly growing metropolis of Berlin.

Representing American Consumer Culture
Later, in the USA, it was above all the beautiful, new world of goods that provided Grosz with inspiration, motifs and themes. To represent and appropriate the "typically American", he collected photographic images with the aim of becoming a successful "businessman" as an artist. Looking at advertising brochures and print adverts, collecting seductive offers, cutting them up and collaging was a method of playfully and critically dealing with foreign cultural experiences for Grosz. He composes single-sheet collages and greetings on postcards from snippets and clippings from advertising adverts that affirmatively reflect the world of consumer goods. show less

An interesting little volume of illustrations by the Expressionist Grosz that can be used for 20th Century art lectures or for the Weimar period.

"Ich erhebe meine Hand und grüße das ewige menschliche Gesetz ... und die fröhliche nichtswürdige Unabänderlichkeit des Lebens!"