The Berlin years of George Grosz and his militant art, capable of shocking and horrifying the pre-nazi German bourgeoisie.
[George Grosz / The Berlin years] A controversial figure, George Grosz, German draftsman and painter, was capable of shocking the German bourgeoisie of the early 1900s with the intentional vulgarity of his subjects, his merciless analysis of the greed for power of the ruling classes, and his condemnation of the militarism of pre-nazi Germany. With the advent of nazism his work was impounded and shown only at the exhibition of “degenerate art”.
The catalogue of the traveling exhibition, held in Venice and Madrid in 1997 and curated by Ralph Jentsch, offers lucid analysis of the militant work of the artist in his early years in Berlin: the beginnings as a caricaturist with a strong bent for social satire, the participation in Dada and the founding, together with Otto Dix, of the New Objectivity group (Neue Sachlichkeit).
Venice, 1997