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THE COLLECTION

Hermann Birkholz

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About this work

Heather Hess, German Expressionist Digital Archive Project, German Expressionism: Works from the Collection. 2011.

This portfolio focuses on the lives of Weimar Germany's forgotten citizens: the toiling proletariat and crippled veterans who enjoyed none of the glittering pleasures of the postwar metropolis. Grosz presents the monotonous lives of the workers sympathetically, reserving his usual scathing caricature for fat capitalists, petit-bourgeois philistines, and pompous army officers. Workers, war invalids, and impoverished mothers and widows go about their lives in tattered clothing with quiet dignity. Grosz humanizes the workers, carefully giving each a unique physiognomy and gait, even as they head en masse to the factory.

In Früh um 5 Uhr! (Dawn), Grosz contrasts emaciated workers with the overfed rich, who gorge themselves at other people's expense. A committed communist who saw his art as a weapon of class struggle, Grosz preferred the ease of making drawings that could then be reproduced mechanically. He nevertheless recognized the need for financial support from the wealthy classes he pilloried in his work. In addition to a cheap "trade union" edition, priced for a working-class budget, the publishing house Malik also produced several hundred copies of Im Schatten (In the shadows) in a costly, limited edition for the art market.

George Grosz (American, born Germany. 1893–1959)

People in the Street (Menschen in der Strasse) from In the Shadows (Im Schatten)

Date:
(1920/21, published 1921)
Medium:
One from a portfolio of nine photolithographs and one photolithographed title page
Dimensions:
composition (irreg.): 12 1/2 x 15 1/8" (31.8 x 38.4 cm)'; sheet: 14 1/8 x 18 7/8" (35.8 x 48 cm)
Paper:
Cream, moderately textured, wove.
Publisher:
Malik-Verlag, Berlin
Printer:
probably Hermann Birkholz, Berlin
Edition:
100 (Edition A: 5 on "Japan Bütten" paper issued in silk-bound portfolio, numbered 1-5 on the colophon; Edition B: 15 on thick, hand-made "Bütten" paper, issued in half-leather bound portfolio, numbered 6-20 on the colophon; Edition C: 30 on thick, hand-made "Bütten" paper, issued in half-silk bound portfolio, numbered 21-50 on the colophon [this ex. no. "34"]; Edition D: 50 on lighter, hand-made "Bütten" paper, issued in half-linen bound portfolio, numbered 51-100 on the colophon)
Credit Line:
Purchase
Copyright:
© 2016 Estate of George Grosz
Reference:
Dückers MIV 9.
MoMA Number:
139.1945.10
Themes:
City Life, Postwar Politics
Techniques:
Reproductive processes

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