George Grosz in America

I thought the war would never end. And perhaps it never did, either. George Grosz

George Grosz, The Wanderer, 1934

George Grosz was born Georg Groß in Berlin (1893), but changed his name in 1916 out of his hatred of Prussian militarism and a romantic enthusiasm for America. (His artist friend and collaborator Helmut Herzfeld changed his name to John Heartfield at the same time and for the same reasons).  Next to Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, Grosz was to become one of the most prominent artists of the Weimar Republic. I have illustrated this post with some of Grosz' later works.

George Grosz, Retreat (Rückzug), 1946

By 1933 Grosz's reputation as a political activist and deflator of German greatness was no secret. Menacing portents and premonitions of disaster began to haunt him. A studio assistant appeared in a brown shirt one day and warned him to be careful; a threatening note calling him a Jew was found beside his easel. A nightmare he recounted in his autobiography ended with a friend shouting at him "Why don't you go to America?" When in the spring of 1932 a cable arrived from the Art Students League in New York, inviting him to teach there during the summer, he accepted immediately. 

 George Grosz, The Painter of the Hole II, 1950

After a short return to Germany, where he was advised that his apartment and studio had been searched by the Gestapo, who were looking for him, Grosz emigrated to New York in January 1933. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1938, and made his home in Bayside, New York. Meanwhile, Grosz was among the defamed artists whose works had been included in two Schandausstellungen (abomination exhibitions) in Mannheim and Stuttgart in 1933. 

 George Grosz, Remembering (Self-Portrait), 1936

The polemical articles about modern art, "art on the edge of insanity" as the official Nazi newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter called it, also regularly included Grosz. A portrait of the poet Max Hermann-Neisse, later to appear in the exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art), was singled out for the "degenerate loathsomeness of the subject". A total of 285 of Grosz's works were removed from German museums and either burnt or sold abroad.

 George Grosz, God of War, 1940

The heirs of George Grosz filed suit in New York in 2009 against the Museum of Modern Art for refusing to return three artworks created by Grosz and left behind by him when he fled Germany in 1933. The artworks, including a portrait of the poet Max Herrmann-Neisse were left behind with his Galerist Alfred Flechtheim. Flechtheim died 1937 in London, having also been exiled from Germany. Flechtheim's wife, Betty, stayed on in Germany not having raised the necessary funds to pay Jewish taxes in order to obtain permission to leave. 

 Georg Grosz, The Poet Max Herrmann-Neisse, 1927

Betty Flechtheim eventually committed suicide in 1941 after having been given notice that she would be sent to a concentration camp. Shortly after Flechtheim's death, Charlotte Weidler, an art dealer and curator for the Carnegie Institute, claimed she had "inherited" paintings from him including the Max Herrmann-Neisse painting. However, the latter belonged to George Grosz who had never given up its ownership. After WWII, in 1949 Weidler brought the painting to New York where she sold it to MoMA in 1952. 

George Grosz, Myself and the Barroom Mirrror, 1937

At the time, George Grosz was living in New York but was not informed of the sale. He continued to exhibit regularly, opened a private art school at his home and taught at the Art Students League intermittently until 1955. In 1946 Grosz had published his autobiography, A Little Yes and a Big No. There he wrote: "A great deal that had become frozen within me in Germany melted here in America and I rediscovered my old yearning for painting. I carefully and deliberately destroyed a part of my past."  

 George Grosz, Female Nude in the Dunes of Cape Cod, 1938

In a letter sent to John Heartfield in 1946, Grosz was notably low key, writing that his European fame now ultimately boiled down to "a card-box container full of newspaper clippings - nothing more". Grosz talked of his having given art lectures at Columbia University and at other institutions, and of doing some illustrations which had brought him "a little fame." But this was, he observed sadly, "not enough to make a living from."

 Anom., George Grosz painting "Cain or Hitler in Hell", New York, 1944

Grosz returned to Germany permanently in 1958, somewhat disillusioned with his American interlude. He was appreciated in America primarily as a satirist, and the work from the period after the First World War was perceived as his best. Grosz was unable to understand the American psyche to the degree that he had the German, and he returned to Berlin in an attempt to regain the momentum he had lost. Six weeks later, at Savigny Platz 5, Grosz died toppling down a flight of stairs after a boozy night out drinking.

Rudolf Bauer and Hilla von Rebay

 Rudolf Bauer, Con Brio IV, 1917

Rudolf Bauer (1889-1953) was born in 1889 in Lindenwald, a town in Silesia that is now part of Poland. His family moved to Berlin in the 1890s. Bauer was an avid artist from an early age. When the moment arrived to discuss his desire to go to art school, his father, disapproving of this choice, beat him so brutally that Bauer ran away from home, never to return. In 1905 Bauer began his studies at the Berlin Academy of Art but left the Academy only a few months later to educate himself. The upshot was paintings, caricatures and comical drawings, which were published in "Berliner Tageblatt", "Ulk" and "Le Figaro".

"Der Sturm" (October 1917) with cover art by Rudolf Bauer

From 1912 Bauer contributed to the magazine and Gallery Der Sturm (The Storm) founded by Herwarth Walden and pivotal to German Expressionism and the international avant-garde. In 1915 Rudolf Bauer participated for the first time in a group show at Walden's gallery. By 1915-16 Bauer had switched to an abstract pictorial idiom, which is markedly influenced by Kandinsky. After the war ended, Bauer was a founder member of the November Group although he did not collaborate closely with the group. In the early 1920s Bauer was also preoccupied with Russian Constructivism as well as the Dutch De Stijl group. 

Hilla von Rebay, Composition I, 1915

The Baroness Hilla von Rebay, daughter of an aristocratic Prussian officer, moved in 1917 to Berlin from Zurich, where she had been studying arts. Her former lover, Jean Arp, had given her an introduction to Der Sturm the previous year. No longer romantically involved with Arp, Rebay met Bauer at the gallery and was courted by him. In 1919 they moved into a studio together at 25 Ahornallee in Berlin's fashionable Westend. This marked the beginning of their tempestuous lifelong relationship. By 1922 Bauer had shown work at about eight exhibitions mounted by Der Sturm. From 1918 he also taught at the Der Sturm art school, where Paul Klee was also an instructor. The early twenties were a prolific period for Bauer. In addition to his Non-Objective work he completed many representational pastels depicting the horrors of World War I and scenes of daily life in postwar Berlin.

Rudolf Bauer, Untitled, c. 1920

In September of 1930, flush with money from sales of his work, Bauer decided the time was right to establish a new art salon in Berlin. Named Das Geistreich (The Realm of the Spirit), Bauer conceived it as a "temple of non-objectivity," a sanctuary where well-heeled buyers would congregate to choose works for their collections. It was the first museum in the world dedicated to Non-Objective art, featuring primarily the works of Bauer and Kandinsky. Marinetti, the Italian Futurist painter, visited Das Geistreich to inaugurate one of the exhibitions and a professional photographer was employed to document the event:

Marinetti (left) and Rudolf Bauer in Bauer's Geistreich Gallery, early 1930s

Rebay, inspired by Bauer's Das Geistreich, lobbied Solomon Guggenheim to consider founding his own museum. In 1936 Guggenheim's collection became the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, with Rebay as its director.  In 1936 she organised a touring exhibition of non-representational European art that included sixty Rudolf Bauer oil paintings and watercolours.

In this photo taken in August 1945, architect Frank Lloyd Wright (left) shows the plan of Guggenheim Museum to Solomon Guggenheim and Hilla von Rebay. Baroness Rebay, was the tour de force behind the creation of the museum. She chose Frank Lloyd Wright to design the museum, and also found the current site for the museum’s residence.

In 1938, upon his return from an exhibition of his work in Paris, Bauer was arrested by the Nazis for his "degenerate" art and for speculating on the black market - meaning selling his work to Guggenheim. The previous year Bauer’s work had been included in the infamous Degenerate Art show in Munich. Upon his arrest Bauer was held in a Gestapo prison for several months, as Rebay and Guggenheim worked to free him.  In 1939, traveling with a suitcase filled with cash and escorted by her uncle who was a General in the German Army, the Baroness was able to purchase Bauer's unconditional release and deportation to the United States with his entire household and studio intact. It is also rumored that Marinetti, who had the ear of Mussolini, put in a good word for the incarcerated artist. Bauer arrived in New York a conquering hero of the artworld, with invitations to lecture on Non-Objective Art at both Harvard and Yale. 

Rudolf Bauer, Pink Circle, 1938

Rudolf Bauer's work was exhibited several times at the Guggenheim Foundation before his death in 1952. His work, which had been consigned to virtual oblivion after 1960 in both the US and Europe, has been enjoying a renascence of interest worldwide since the 1980s. You can see many more of his works at Weinstein Gallery.