Savage caricatures: Acerbic painting as social commentary George Grosz (1893-1959) was one of the most important exponents of Dadaism, and therefore of political painting in general. He not only condemned both militarism and bourgeois culture, but also set himself in opposition to traditional forms of art. The decisive element in Grosz's paintings is their content: in them he pointed out defects in the political and social conditions, literally arraigning them before the public. For Grosz, painting served as a political instrument: "I drew and painted from a sense of contradiction and through my work tried to convince the world that it was ugly, sick, and phony." Fascinated by the metropolis, Grosz depicted the wild and dissolute life in the bars and nightclubs of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. He directed his attention to the shady side of life and filled his canvas with caricatures of distorted figures. Grosz never permitted human beings to emerge as individuals, but instead always portrayed types, as representatives of a social level or class. After the publication of his candidly drawn "pornographic illustrations," Grosz fell under strong criticism in the 1920s. The Nazis castigated his works as "degenerate art." About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

This acclaimed autobiography by one of the twentieth century's greatest satirical artists is as much a graphic portrait of Germany in chaos after the Treaty of Versailles as it is a memoir of a remarkable artist's development. Grosz's account of a world gone mad is as acute and provocative as the art that depicts it, and this translation of a work long out of print restores the spontaneity, humor, and energy of the author's German text. It also includes a chapter on Grosz's experience in the Soviet Union—omitted from the original English-language edition—as well as more writings about his twenty-year self-imposed exile in America, and a fable written in English.

Including 150 work on paper as well as several of the artist's key theoretical essays and letters, this text is the catalogue for a 1997 Royal Academy exhibition of the drawings, watercolours and prints of George Grosz.

"George Grosz (1893-1959) spent more than half of his creative career in the United States. The numerous paintings, watercolors, and drawings from all of the important groups of works from the American period, most of which have been newly photographed and are included here as full-page reproductions, refute the widespread opinion that Grosz's work lost its much-admired bite after he moved to New York. While his apocalyptic paintings prove that he was a visionary opponent of war and oppression, his unrivaled illustrations for the great authors of the period and for magazines like Esquire testify to Grosz's mastery of drawing." --Book Jacket.

"In his trenchant, inimitable style, George Grosz (1893-1959) skewered the German establishment during the turbulent period between World War I and the Third Reich. Decadence, corruption, greed and violence are the recurring themes in this fascinating selection of 100 drawings and paintings. The text follows Grosz through his extraordinary career and offers an intriguing look at the vanished world of the Berlin avant-garde."--Cover.