(1893-1959)

During the First World War, Grosz had produced strong satirical drawings of the military, and, with John Heartfield, had developed a technique of photomontage in order to indict the ruling caste. He participated in Dada activities for a couple of years after the war. At the same time, he was beginning to work on his extraordinary drawings of the various groups within German society that were either victims or victimizers during the chaotic aftermath of the war. His trenchant characterizations based on observed reality were considered the motivating force for a movement that came to be called Neue Sachlichkeit.

GROSZ'S THOUGHTS ON ART

"The artistic revolutions of painters and poets are certainly interesting and aesthetically valuable-but still, in the last analysis, they are studio problems and many artists who earnestly torment themselves about such matters end up by succumbing to skepticism and bourgeois nihilism. This happens because persisting in their individualistic artistic eccentricities they never learn to understand revolutionary issues with any clarity; in fact, they rarely bother with such things. Why, there are even art-revolutionary painters who haven't freed themselves from painting Christ and the apostles; now, at the very time when it is their revolutionary duty to double their efforts at propaganda in order to purify the world of supernatural forces, God and His angels, and thereby sharpen mankind's awareness of its true relationship to the world. Those symbols, long since exhausted, and the mystical raptures of that stupid saint hocus-pocus, today's painting is full of that stuff and what can it possibly means to us? All this painted nonsense certainly can't stand up to reality. Life is much too strong for it. What should you do to give content to your paintings? Go to a proletarian meeting; look and listen how people there, people just like you, discuss some small improvement of their lot. And understand-these masses are the ones who are reorganizing the world. Not you! But you can work with them. You could help them if you wanted to! And that way you could learn to give your art a content which was supported by the revolutionary ideals of the workers. As for my works in this portfolio, I want to say the following: I am again trying to give an absolutely realistic picture of the world. I want every man to understand me-without that profundity fashionable these days, without those depths which demand a veritable diving outfit stuffed with cabalistic and metaphysical hocus-pocus. In my efforts to develop a clear and simple style I can't help drawing closer to [Carlo D.] CarrA. Nevertheless, every-thing which is metaphysical and bourgeois about CarrA's work repels me .My work should be interpreted as training, as a hard workout, without any vision into eternity! I am trying in my so-called works of art to construct something with a completely realistic foundation. Man is no longer an individual to be examined in subtle psychological terms, but a collective, almost mechanical concept. Individual destiny no longer matters. just as the ancient Greeks, I would like to create absolutely simple sport symbols which would be so easily understood that no commentary would be necessary. I am suppressing color. Lines are used in an impersonal, photographic way to construct volumes. Once more stability, construction, and practical purpose--e. g. , sport, engineer, and machine but devoid of Futurist romantic dynamism.

Once more to establish control over line and form-it's no longer a question of conjuring up on canvas brightly colored Expressionistic soul-tapestries-the objectivity and clarity of an engineer's drawing is preferable to the uncontrolled twaddle of the cabala, metaphysics, and ecstatic saints.
It isn't possible to be absolutely precise when you write about your own work, especially if you're always in training-then each day brings new discoveries and a new orientation. But I would like to say one thing more: I see the future development of painting taking place in workshops, in pure craftsmanship, not in any holy temple of the arts. Painting is manual labor, no different from any other; it can be done well or poorly. Today we have a star system, so do the other arts-but that will disappear. [1920]

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