George Grosz and his Berlin

Virtuose, precise, disillusioned, angry, painfully hilarious. the pencil of George Grosz, born and deceased (1893-1959) in Berlin, the city that he depicted so much, still surprises us with its modernity, a hundred years after his first successes. He portrayed cruelly the decadent bourgeoisie of the Weimar Republic or the reactionary royalistic officers. He was a communist (member of the Novembergruppe), but not for long. He was among the first Dada in Berlin, but for a short period. Grosz, an individual with total commitment and desperate in his art.

At the same time painter (classified in the "new objectivity", with Otto Dix and Max Beckmann) and satirist, in galleries and magazines, a German Revolutionary and a delighted naturalized American. He attempted the reconciliation of the opposites. Despite the frequentation of Dada, he will remain attached to a classical form of painting, to figuration. He writes poetic texts that depict Berlin in the hardest times, with its neon lights that dimly light up the night. The war was a terrible shock for him (he served under German flag), the violence of the society makes vibrate his pen and his brush, to denounce the executioner, the inner oppressor.

Premonitory artist, he left Berlin late 1932, barely escaping the Nazi terror. A large part of his works, considered "degenerate" and "Bolshevik" will be destroyed by the Hitlerites. He leaves for New York, where he teaches and publishes in Esquire magazine. His style is softer, some say that he loses his bite. America changes him. He nevertheless keeps the virtuosity of his drawing. His latest collages announce pop-art, but will not have the echo of his Berlin works of the 1920s.