The Berlin of George Grosz: Drawings, Watercolours and Prints, 1912-1930 [Hardcover]

Frank Whitford (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 21, 1997

No other artist's work depicts Berlin of the 1920s as unmistakably as the paintings, drawings, and prints of George Grosz (1893-1959). At first politically committed but then increasingly disillusioned, Grosz portrayed Germany from its defeat in World War I, through economic and political crisis, to the rise and triumph of Fascism. His work teems with the characters of the capital of the Weimar Republic: the prostitutes and pimps, the beggars and black marketeers, the scheming politicians, vengeful military and judiciary personnel, dissatisfied workers, and self-important bourgeoisie.

This book presents about 150 of Grosz's finest works on paper. It also provides fascinating information about the artist, including several of his key theoretical essays and many revealing letters that are here translated into English for the first time. Grosz was more than a merciless satirist and accurate social commentator: he was also one of the greatest artists of the age whose unerring, razor-sharp line and unique powers of observation were complemented by stylistic and technical innovations. He put the fragmentation of Cubism and Futurism to new ends, gave a new dimension to the mysterious anonymity of metaphysical painting, and employed photomontage (he was one of the earliest practitioners) to reflect the energy and confusion of his period. Grosz was a member of the artistic avant-garde, a key personality in the Dada movement, and he also appealed to a mass audience through his political cartoons, unmatched since Daumier's satirical works of the previous century.

This book is the catalogue for an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London from March to June, 1997.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

This volume demonstrates how brilliantly Grosz caught the life, and more importantly the feverish imagination, of a city and a nation in a particularly turbulent time. Marrying the jumpy lines and figural distortions of cubism to narrative subjects and an angry sense of morality, he illuminated the tawdry, often violent, lives of Berlin's down-and-out, its powerbrokers, and its murderers, during the chaotic Weimar years of the 1920s, in corrosive, unsettling, kinetic images. The drawings and prints of drunken prostitutes and their leering customers, calm murderers inspecting the bodies of their victims, fat businessmen and their voluptuous mistresses, prim bourgeoisie and exhausted workers, and mutilated ex-soldiers, are complemented here by some of Grosz's less familiar, and equally disturbing, watercolors. Whitford, a former lecturer in art history at Cambridge, provides a useful introduction to Grosz's life and times, and detailed and very helpful annotations to the artwork. A superb overview of a unique career. (139 b&w and 54 color illustrations) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

Few artists have truly defined an era. George Grosz, the great truth-teller of Weimar Germany and the early Nazi years, came as close as any.... Though full of dark humor, many of the images retain their power to shock. -- The New York Times Book Review, Ted Loos

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First edition (July 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300072066
• ISBN-13: 978-0300072068
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 10.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,109,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the best Grosz books, November 22, 2009

By 

Winston hough "klee fan" (Glenview, Il. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Berlin of George Grosz: Drawings, Watercolours and Prints, 1912-1930 (Hardcover)

After I had bought the Hans Hess , Herbert Bittner,Serge Sabarsky ,Beth Lewis Books, I bought this book as it was one of the first books to discuss and illustrate Grosz's work in theater. His drawings put him in the satirical art classification.But his work in theater was less traditional ,and it is here that he must be remembered as a Dadaist.Duchamp of course is best known as a dadaist..for his urinal for one. Hans Arp is always listed as the dadaist in the crossword puzzles.The Zurich (Arp for one) group is different than the Berlin group and the New York Dadaist such as Duchamp.The recent Skira book on Grosz has reproductions of Grosz's work in theater but the color reproductions are about equal in quality.This is a good book on Grosz but ,not as comprehensive as the Grosz New York - Berlin catalogue of the exhibition held in Rome Italy. Sorry ,it is higher in price!