George Grosz quotes

George Grosz was a German artist, celebrated for his sharply satirical drawings and paintings. His work vividly critiqued the corruption and decadence of German society during the Weimar Republic. He became a prominent figure in the Dada and New Objectivity movements. Here are 22 of his quotes:

I see the future development of painting taking place in workshops.. ..not in any holy temple of the arts. Painting is manual labor, no different from any other. It can be done well or poorly. (George Grosz)
Yes, [to] the Communist party! [the presiding judge asked Grosz: 'Do you belong to a political party?']. View quote
George Grosz
Art today is an absolutely secondary matter. Anyone who is able to look further than the walls of his own studio can see this.. .All the same, art is a business that demands a very clear decision from anyone who undertakes it. It is not immaterial where you stand in this business.. .Are you on the side of the exploiters or on that of the masses, who want to wring the exploiters' necks? View quote
George Grosz
The war was a mirror; it reflected man's every virtue and every vice, and if you looked closely, like an artist at his drawings, it showed up both with unusual clarity. View quote
George Grosz
I had grown up in a humanist atmosphere, and war to me was never anything but horror, mutilation and senseless destruction, and I knew that many great and wise people felt the same way about it. View quote
George Grosz
I stood up as best I could to their disgusting stupidity and brutality, but I did not, of course, manage to beat them at their own game. It was a fight to the bitter end, one in which I was not defending ideals or beliefs but simply my own self. View quote
George Grosz
I am lonely without measure; that is to say, I am alone with my doubles, phantasms in whom I realize specific dreams, ideas, inclinations, and so on. I rip three other people out of my inner life, give them names, and believe in them myself. Gradually three clearly defined types have emerged: *1: Grosz. *2: Count Ehrenfried, the nonchalant aristocrat with the well-manicured fingernails, concerned only with cultivating himself; in a word, the detached, aristocratic individualist. *3: The physician. Dr. William King Thomas, the more American, practical counterweight to Grosz the mother figure. View quote
George Grosz
A composition should be simple and clear. That is why the drawings of children and primitives are so strong. View quote
George Grosz
My Drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment, I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon ... I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands ... I drew lonely little men fleeing madly through empty streets. I drew a cross-section of tenement house: through one window could be seen a man attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; from a third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. I drew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-like steel arms; two medical soldiers putting a violent infantryman into a strait-jacket made of a horse blanket ... I drew a skeleton dressed as a recruit being examined for military duty. I also wrote poetry. View quote
George Grosz
Day after day gasped away, slowly seep hours when fettered or immured, only at times does imagination scale the palisades that the spirit of chaos and confusion, the spirit of reactionary bombast, has set up around us - dreams, dreams of endless, destructive hate! Mists of hate, beclouding the burning brain! View quote
George Grosz
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)
Árt is dead. Long live Tatlin's new machine art. View quote
George Grosz
I was disappointed, not because we had lost the war but because our people had allowed it to go on for so many years, instead of heeding the few voices of protest against all that mass insanity and slaughter. View quote
George Grosz
I thought the war would never end. And perhaps it never did, either. View quote
George Grosz
It's an old ploy of the bourgeoisie. They keep a standing 'art' to defend their collapsing culture. View quote
George Grosz
What can I say about the First World War, a war in which I served as an infantryman, a war I hated at the start and to which I never warmed as it proceeded? View quote
George Grosz
Peace was declared, but not all of us were drunk with joy or stricken blind. View quote
George Grosz
Very little changed fundamentally, except that the proud German soldier had turned into a defeated bundle of misery and the great German army had disintegrated. View quote
George Grosz
In 1916 I was discharged from military service, or rather, given a sort of leave of absence on the understanding that I might be recalled within a few months. And so I was a free man, at least for a while. View quote
George Grosz
I don't even like to talk about it. I hated being a number and not merely because I was a very small one. I let them bellow at me for just as long as it took me to find enough pluck to bellow back at them. View quote
George Grosz
The bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie have armed themselves against the rising proletariat with, among other things, 'culture.' (George Grosz)
The cult of individuality and personality, which promotes painters and poets only to promote itself, is really a business. The greater the 'genius' of the personage, the greater the profit. View quote
George Grosz

George Grosz

Occupation: German Artist
Born: July 26, 1893
Died: July 6, 1959
Quotes count: 22
Wikipedia: George Grosz

Related authors

Otto Dix - thumbnail
Otto Dix  21 
German Painter
Max Beckmann  69 
German Painter
Käthe Kollwitz - thumbnail
Käthe Kollwitz  24 
German Artist
Kurt Schwitters  34 
German Artist
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner  54 
German Painter
Emil Nolde - thumbnail
Emil Nolde  33 
German Artist
Max Ernst - thumbnail
Max Ernst  22 
German Painter
Jean Arp - thumbnail
Jean Arp  47 
German Sculptor
Lyonel Feininger - thumbnail
Lyonel Feininger  1 
German-American Painter
Paul Klee - thumbnail
Paul Klee  115 
Swiss Artist