George Grosz was born on July 26, 1893 to a lower middle class family in Poland. After losing his father at a young age, it forced his mother to find work and with a little influence from a relative, young George found his interest in art. He shortly began weekly classes with a local painter named Grot who inspired him to continue his creativity and to transcribe them in his art. George escaped his brutal reality thru his paintings aiming towards modern adventures while focusing on assassinations man hunts, and executions taking place around him.

At a young age he volunteered to fight WW I and joined the German army but was later discharged and was labeled as an unfit person to serve in the war. Soon after the dismissed, his artistic ideas completely changed and now were more brutal and graphics, expressing his own experience not just in the battlefield but also in the society he was living.  These artistic expressions caused mayhem in his society and before WW II began he immigrated to the United States in search of new ideas. He landed in New York and became the art professor at the Art Student League and later lost his interest in political caricature expression and began aiming at the New York landscape of nature.  In 1959 George returned to Berlin in where he later died.

The first piece I will talk about is a water color base painting called the “Daum marries her pedantic automaton” made in 1920 with the figure of a man and a woman exposing her herself in a degrading way. The caricature of the man describes the man as a robot or mechanical creature implying how the military or Nazi men of that era were manipulated and brain wash to think and behave a certain way. The art also depicts a drawing of a woman half exposed with a fear expression on her face not knowing what was going to happen next. The woman is presented as an entertainment tool for these particular men. There is also a hand foundling the woman breast in a disgusting way without her knowledge insinuating that he was next in turn. On the background of the painting there is a picture of a real woman looking away as if she was ignoring the abuse that was taking place.

The second painting is oil on canvas painting called “A Winter’s Tale” made in 1917/1919 and is a collage of all the evil and negative incidents that were taking place in Germany while depicting how corrupted the country was. This drawing shows a man in the center of chaos with a worry free look on his face and waiting for his meal to be served. While in the background there is illustrations of abuse the German society were enduring during this particular time. This drawing screams out that only those who were in power were the only ones benefiting from the tragedies. While the country was sinking with debt, poverty, hunger, slavery, prostitution, and execution, only those with governmental power were safe. The three men in the center of the drawing represented how religion, the government and the rich were all part of the destruction of German society.

This last one is an oil on canvas 1921 painting called “Grey Day” and it shows a few men walking with their heads down appearing to be ill and very tired from the abuse that is set up on them. They are walking on the industrial side of the painting dealing with abuse, torture, and death waiting in the background, while another man very well dressed appearing in better health, shows to be aware of the situation but decided to continue his journey. These drawings show a very sad era in the German history and the beginning of world destruction.