From the cycle „Ecce homo“ - 50. Acrobats

George Grosz (1893-1959), a Berlin-based painter not only influenced German art from Dada to New Objectivity, but also the Czech art scene of the 1920s, especially caricature and satirical drawing. Grosz’ art, socially engaged and critical, excoriated German nationalism, superficial morality and pettybourgeois thinking. Penalised on several occasions for his work, he was forced to pay fines, e.g. in 1928 for slander in his drawing Shut Up and Keep Serving the Cause, which was meant to be shown on an illuminated background during a performance of The Good Soldier Švejk at a Berlin theatre. In the years after World War I, he co-founded radical group magazines as a member of the Berlin Dada group and concentrated on producing drawings. He transformed his drawings into lithographs and published them as picture cycles in large print runs. The first, Grosz’ Small Album, was published in 1917. After the political albums God With Us (1920), In the Shadows (1921) and The Face of the Ruling Class (1922), he published the album Robbers (1922), i.e. the thieves of capitalism, now (vyhodit, alb je mnoho) owned by the National Gallery in Prague, as well as his most extensive cycle Ecce Homo of 1923, the cornerstone of this exhibition. The voluminous publication issued in five different editions consisted of 84 lithographs and 16 watercolour paintings. Grosz continued to promote his sharply critical drawings and graphic sheets until he emigrated to the USA 1933.