Jules Heller Print Study Room
George Grosz
Artist: George Grosz
Title: The Hero
Year Produced: c. 1936
Medium: Lithograph
Dimensions: 16 x 11 ½”
Location: Storage
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Roth
About the Artist
“Among Germans who have a healthy, natural sense of judgment - experts as well as laymen - the artistic talents of Herr Grosz will find themselves much less esteemed. Grosz is a skillful political agitator, who uses his pencil, rather than words, for his propaganda. He does not belong on the side of German artists, but with Bolshevists or rather nihilist politicians.”(2) Hannoverischer Courier, 5 December 1930
“Art is in danger. Today’s artist, unless he wants to be useless, an antiquated misfit, can only choose between technology or class war propaganda. In both cases he must give up “pure art”. Either he joins the ranks of architects, engineers, and ad men who develop industrial strength and who exploit the world, or he, as depictor and critic of the face of our time, as propagandist and defender of the revolutionary ideas and its followers, enters into the army of the oppressed who fight for their just share of the worth of the world and for a sensible social organization of life.”(3) George Grosz, 1925
Grosz is best known most for his drawings done during the time of the Weimar
Republic. The Hero, a drawing of one of the many pathetic, wounded veterans
of the First World War, exhibits all of the characteristics of Grosz’s art
at that time. It is crudely drawn, the draughtmanship reflecting and augmenting
the subject matter. It is critical of both the society that started the war,
the Second Reich of Kaiser Wilhelm, and the society that tolerated the impoverishment
of the poor and the veterans after the war, that of the Weimar Republic. Although
glad to be done with the Kaiser and the German aristocracy, Grosz, with his
growing commitment to the Communist Party, was highly critical of the new
regime.
Grosz’s early life was marked by loss and frequent upheaval. Born in
Berlin, but living in the country, his father died when he was eight and the
family was forced by necessity to move to Berlin. Later his mother found work
with a Prussian officers’ casino and the family moved back to the country.
In 1909, he was accepted at the Dresden Academy of Art, where he stayed until
1911. He then moved on to Berlin, where he studied at the School of Arts and
Crafts. The First World War came and, in November 1914, he enlisted. Released
on medical grounds, he was recalled in January 1917 only to be released in
April on the grounds of being mentally unfit. Throughout this time, he worked
on refining his technique and his subject matter. His experience with the
War and the collapse that came afterwards led him to certain decisions in
his work. Initially a Dadaist dandy, he gradually embraced the ideals of communism,
and turned his pen to social criticism. This pen would get him in trouble;
he was brought to trial, due to right wing pressure, three times for a series
of drawings.
Why is this drawing deliberately crude? There is not the attention to
fine line work that is associated with artists that preceded Grosz, from Leonardo
to Degas, and there is the possibility that this was all Grosz was capable
of. The artist, though, is depicting a pathetic and poignant scene; that of
a mutilated and crippled war veteran, a step above begging, trying to sell
wilted flowers to indifferent passerbys. Grosz uses the linear technique to
amplify his distaste and disgust of German society of the time. Moreover his
scathing criticism escapes no one. The society that casts off veterans and
the poor as refuse is attacked but there is also an implicit criticism of
this hero as well. Was he duped into fighting for something that ultimately
rejected him or did he go willingly? In terms of Grosz’s political thoughts
at the time, is the hero better served by acquiescing and fading away by the
side rather than organizing and fighting the society that scarred him? Would
the hero, given half a chance, fight for that society again?
Grosz gradually moved away from communism, in 1933 branded a “petty-bourgeois
traitor and renegade”, and his art moved away with him. The Hero is a polemical
work, aimed at the corrupted heart of the Weimar Republic. It does not, though,
depict the triumph of the worker’s revolution. Its target is broader; human
stupidity, gullibility and frailty in all its forms, from the right to the
left, from the society to the individual.
Notes
(1) Flavell, Mary Kay, George Grosz: A Biography, (Yale University Press,
New Haven), 1988, p.27
(2) Flavell, p. 64
(3) Lewis, Beth Irwin, George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic,
(Princeton University Press, Princeton), 1991, p. 118
Suggested Reading
George Grosz, The Autobiography of George Grosz: a small yes and a big no (trans. Arnold J. Pomerans), (Allison and Busby, N.Y.), 1982
Mary Kay Flavell, George Grosz: A Biography, (Yale University Press, New Haven), 1988
Beth Irwin Lewis, George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Princeton
University Press, Princeton), 1991
Michael Stevenson
Research Assistant
Graduate Student - Painting and Drawing
Fall1997
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