George Grosz: The Stick Men

Text by Heather Arnet, Ralf Kemper, Juerg Judin, Pay Matthis Karstens, Alice Delage, and Karli Wurzelbacher.

German draughtsman George Grosz (1893–1959) created his last major series of paintings and watercolors, the “Stick Men”, beginning in the mid-1940s in reaction to the Holocaust and the other atrocities of the Second World War. The deployment of atomic bombs in Japan and the threat of a Third World War further deepened what the artist termed his “despair, hate and disillusionment.”

In his final works, he drew his figures as dehumanized, famished beings aimlessly wandering through a contaminated, post-apocalyptic world. As the first exhibition of the “Stick Men” series following the artists’ death, this catalog contradicts the notion that Grosz had become “soft” and apolitical during his years spent in the United States. Rather, this series is the culmination of the political and artistic convictions of a lifetime of struggle: a timely and relevant legacy even today.

Hardcover
148 pages | 76 color and 14 black-and-white illustrations
Walther König, 2024
8 x 10.75 inches
ISBN 9783753304403
Artist Monograph, World War II