Midsummer Night

Midsummer Night is an original seven-color offset lithograph, realized by George Grosz in between 1922 and 1923.

The artwork is the plate n. X from the portfolio "Ecce Homo", published between 1922/1923. Edition of Der Malik-Verlag Berli. Numbered on plate on lower margin.

Original title: Johannisnacht 

Good conditions except for a yellowing of paper due to the time, some foxings and some minor defects along the margin. 

Ecce homo is a selected compendium of 100 artworks (16 watercolors and 84 drawings) that Grosz realized from 1915 to 1922. The book is a real satire of post-war German life, with prostitutes, politicians, mutilated veterans,capitalists, and drunks in different states of despair, lust, and rage. The German government banned his artworks and Grosz was put on trial for public offense.

George Grosz (1893 -1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic.

His artworks had great impact in the Berlin Dada movement 1917-20 and collaborated with John Heartfield and Raoul Hausmann in the invention of photomontage.  Many of his drawings were published in albums (Gott mit uns, Ecce Homo, Der Spiesser-Spiegel etc.), and he was subject to prosecutions for insulting the army and blasphemy. Visited the USA in 1932 to teach at the Art Students League, New York, and settled there 1933. In the latter part of his career he tried to establish himself as a pure painter of landscapes and still life, but also painted many compositions of an apocalyptic and deeply pessimistic kind. His role in the Berlin Dada movement affected political outlooks and artistic developments not only in Germany, but also in Russia, the Balkan nations, and parts of France. Grosz's penetrating, darkly humorous style of drawing and his use of satire as a weapon left a deep impression on the work of his contemporaries and the artists of the next generation. Some of his works from the early 1940s, particularly during World War II, do present an allegorical and dramatic representation of Grosz's moral perspective regarding war. Additionally, some of his last pieces from 1958 were photomontages and hearken back to his earlier Dadaist aesthetic and message, passing judgment upon consumerism and suggesting that his absorption with American culture had ended in disappointment. In 1959, Grosz sold his house and moved back to Berlin. He died shortly after his return, after a fall from the stairs.

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