George Grosz - The Years in America: 1933-1958

George Grosz - The Years in America: 1933-1958 at David Nolan Gallery. "...For 27 years, more than half of his artistically productive life, George Grosz lived and worked in the United States. The fact that it is only now, 50 years after his death, that a comprehensive exhibition is being dedicated to this important period speaks volumes of the helplessness that has hitherto characterized the art world's reaction to the complex and contradictory character of Grosz's work. One widely held opinion states that Grosz lost his much-admired audacity upon immigrating to New York; that he miraculously turned apolitical during the crossing aboard the Stuttgart in January 1933, while Nazi henchmen were ransacking his studio in Berlin. Whatever Grosz would paint, draw, or say over the course of following quarter of a century, it was always overshadowed by his socially critical, satirical work of his Weimar years. Few have visually shaped an era as George Grosz did with the interwar years, through his drawings and portfolios. For this he was loved and hated, tried in court, and declared a 'degenerate' artist."