Lot Essay
Wildwest is one of a series of celebrated works which George Grosz executed during a short spell away from military service between 1915 and 1917. Thematically these paintings illustrate Grosz's increasing disillusionment with the War, his despair of the social breakdown in Europe (see Fig. 4) or his dream of America - the ultimate land of adventure and opportunity - the land of Wildwest.
In 1915 Grosz set up a studio in Südende, Berlin, where he was able to retreat from the events of the outside world. Berlin was still a vibrant city despite the War and here Grosz was able to enjoy a life of dancing, jazz music and late nights entertaining friends in his studio drinking American whisky. Many of Grosz's greatest paintings were executed in this Südende studio.
As a child he had been fascinated by America. Like so many German children, his imagination was captured by the adventure stories of Karl May and by heroes such as Buffalo Bill and Nick Carter. To Grosz, the small river Stolpe in front of his house became the Hudson, and the character Chingachgook of Fennimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans became his friend. In his Jugenderinnerungen published in 1929 in the magazine 'Das Kunstblatt' Grosz wrote "Ich weiss nicht, ob man diese Jugendlektüre für meine heute noch anhaftende Amerikaschwärmerei verantwortlich machen soll. Jedenfalls war damals Amerika das Land meiner Sehnsucht und ist es sonderbarerweise, zum Ärger meiner orthodoxen marxistischen Freunde, bis heute geblieben".
Although Grosz had never crossed the Atlantic, America became for him the embodiment of a freedom which he felt nobody could enjoy in war-torn Europe. The idea of digging for gold, of enjoying the freedom of Lederstrumpf or Chingachgook, fascinated him. As the claustrophobia of Prussian Germany threatened to engulf him, so he became more and more obsessed with America.
In 1916, in the middle of the War and shortly before Wildwest was painted, Georg Ehrenfried Gross Americanized his name to George Grosz. In an effort to cut an authentic American persona with his artistic friends, he built a teepee in his Südende studio and regularly dressed as an American pioneer. Indeed, the earliest known photograph of Wildwest taken in 1917 shows Grosz in this guise, with the painting hanging directly behind him on his studio wall (see Fig. 1). To illustrate how highly paintings of this period are regarded, other works seen in this photograph include Metropolis, now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, Der Liebeskranke, housed in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Berlin, Café, housed in the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, and Metropolis, housed in the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Wildwest is suffused with images and motifs taken from other works of the period and Grosz also used other characters in the painting in works of later years. He executed numerous drawings, paintings and poems between 1915 and 1917 expressing his passion for America and many of the most powerful motifs are triumphantly drawn together in Wildwest. Grosz's cunning gold-diggers, who appeared in his Old Jimmy drawing of 1916 (see Fig. 7) sit at a gambling table outside a brothel at the left of the picture. The Red Indian, the dog, the desert landscape and the cowboy all appear in the second plate of the Erste George Grosz-Mappe series of prints which Grosz published in 1916-17. The plate was entitled Texasbild für meinen Freund Chingachgook and is referred to several times in the Artist's account book as "Wild-West". Another major work by Grosz which captures the American spirit of Wildwest is his Der Abenteurer of 1917 (see Fig. 5), which was formerly in the Stadtmuseum, Dresden but tragically has been destroyed. With apparent ease, in Wildwest Grosz has fused his experiences of wartime Berlin and its characters and bars, with his fervent visions of America.
Grosz's vision of America is so strong that it is difficult to believe he painted it from his Berlin studio. He presents his Wild West as if he were already in the promised land, with Europe a barely discernable chain of mountains in the distance. Three oceanliners can be seen crossing the Atlantic and approaching the harbour at the entrance of the New World, where skyscrapers of New York loom on the horizon. It is extraordinary to think this picture was painted purely from the imagination and that Grosz did not visit America until 1932 when he was offered a teaching post at the New York Arts Student League. He settled there for 27 years before returning to Berlin in June 1959, where he died a month later.
It is likely that Grosz sold Wildwest to the collector and gallery-owner Herbert von Garvens-Garvensburg of Hannover since he is listed as the lender of the picture in the catalogue for the inaugural Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition held at the Städtische Kunsthalle in Mannheim in 1925. The Kunsthalle Director and organiser of the exhibition, Dr Gustav Hartlaub, wanted to show the development of art from Expressionism to Contemporary Art, and the catalogue bore the secondary title "Deutsche Malerei seit dem Expressionismus". This pivotal exhibition which established the term Neue Sachlichkeit, included 7 works by Grosz which are almost without exception housed in major museum collections today. They include John, der Frauenmörder of 1918, now in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Magistratsbeamter für Kriegsbeschädigtenfürsorge of 1921, now in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and Portrait des Schriftstellers Max Hermann-Neisse of 1925, now in the Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim (see Fig. 3). Other leading exhibitors included Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and Ernst Fritsch.
In 1923 von Garvens ran into financial difficulty. His gallery was closed down and part of his collection was sold. Wildwest next appeared in exhibitions held by the great German dealer Alfred Flechtheim in Berlin and Düsseldorf in 1927. Under the title 'George Grosz und Kongo Skulpturen', Wildwest was hung alongside twenty-five other works by Grosz painted between 1914 and 1927. The painting then went missing and was not exhibited for fifty years. Until very recently Grosz scholars had feared the picture was lost or destroyed, the unhappy fate of several other major pictures of this early period. Wildwest was recently re-discovered hanging in a discreet private collection having been purchased by the father of the present owner some forty years ago.
Wildwest is to be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Grosz's paintings which is currently being prepared by Ralph Jentsch. We would like to extend our thanks to Peter Grosz. The painting has also been requested for the forthcoming exhibition George Grosz: The Berlin Years taking place at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice, between March and May 1997.
We are extremely grateful to Ralph Jentsch for his extensive research and major contribution to this catalogue entry.
In 1915 Grosz set up a studio in Südende, Berlin, where he was able to retreat from the events of the outside world. Berlin was still a vibrant city despite the War and here Grosz was able to enjoy a life of dancing, jazz music and late nights entertaining friends in his studio drinking American whisky. Many of Grosz's greatest paintings were executed in this Südende studio.
As a child he had been fascinated by America. Like so many German children, his imagination was captured by the adventure stories of Karl May and by heroes such as Buffalo Bill and Nick Carter. To Grosz, the small river Stolpe in front of his house became the Hudson, and the character Chingachgook of Fennimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans became his friend. In his Jugenderinnerungen published in 1929 in the magazine 'Das Kunstblatt' Grosz wrote "Ich weiss nicht, ob man diese Jugendlektüre für meine heute noch anhaftende Amerikaschwärmerei verantwortlich machen soll. Jedenfalls war damals Amerika das Land meiner Sehnsucht und ist es sonderbarerweise, zum Ärger meiner orthodoxen marxistischen Freunde, bis heute geblieben".
Although Grosz had never crossed the Atlantic, America became for him the embodiment of a freedom which he felt nobody could enjoy in war-torn Europe. The idea of digging for gold, of enjoying the freedom of Lederstrumpf or Chingachgook, fascinated him. As the claustrophobia of Prussian Germany threatened to engulf him, so he became more and more obsessed with America.
In 1916, in the middle of the War and shortly before Wildwest was painted, Georg Ehrenfried Gross Americanized his name to George Grosz. In an effort to cut an authentic American persona with his artistic friends, he built a teepee in his Südende studio and regularly dressed as an American pioneer. Indeed, the earliest known photograph of Wildwest taken in 1917 shows Grosz in this guise, with the painting hanging directly behind him on his studio wall (see Fig. 1). To illustrate how highly paintings of this period are regarded, other works seen in this photograph include Metropolis, now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, Der Liebeskranke, housed in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Berlin, Café, housed in the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, and Metropolis, housed in the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Wildwest is suffused with images and motifs taken from other works of the period and Grosz also used other characters in the painting in works of later years. He executed numerous drawings, paintings and poems between 1915 and 1917 expressing his passion for America and many of the most powerful motifs are triumphantly drawn together in Wildwest. Grosz's cunning gold-diggers, who appeared in his Old Jimmy drawing of 1916 (see Fig. 7) sit at a gambling table outside a brothel at the left of the picture. The Red Indian, the dog, the desert landscape and the cowboy all appear in the second plate of the Erste George Grosz-Mappe series of prints which Grosz published in 1916-17. The plate was entitled Texasbild für meinen Freund Chingachgook and is referred to several times in the Artist's account book as "Wild-West". Another major work by Grosz which captures the American spirit of Wildwest is his Der Abenteurer of 1917 (see Fig. 5), which was formerly in the Stadtmuseum, Dresden but tragically has been destroyed. With apparent ease, in Wildwest Grosz has fused his experiences of wartime Berlin and its characters and bars, with his fervent visions of America.
Grosz's vision of America is so strong that it is difficult to believe he painted it from his Berlin studio. He presents his Wild West as if he were already in the promised land, with Europe a barely discernable chain of mountains in the distance. Three oceanliners can be seen crossing the Atlantic and approaching the harbour at the entrance of the New World, where skyscrapers of New York loom on the horizon. It is extraordinary to think this picture was painted purely from the imagination and that Grosz did not visit America until 1932 when he was offered a teaching post at the New York Arts Student League. He settled there for 27 years before returning to Berlin in June 1959, where he died a month later.
It is likely that Grosz sold Wildwest to the collector and gallery-owner Herbert von Garvens-Garvensburg of Hannover since he is listed as the lender of the picture in the catalogue for the inaugural Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition held at the Städtische Kunsthalle in Mannheim in 1925. The Kunsthalle Director and organiser of the exhibition, Dr Gustav Hartlaub, wanted to show the development of art from Expressionism to Contemporary Art, and the catalogue bore the secondary title "Deutsche Malerei seit dem Expressionismus". This pivotal exhibition which established the term Neue Sachlichkeit, included 7 works by Grosz which are almost without exception housed in major museum collections today. They include John, der Frauenmörder of 1918, now in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Magistratsbeamter für Kriegsbeschädigtenfürsorge of 1921, now in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and Portrait des Schriftstellers Max Hermann-Neisse of 1925, now in the Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim (see Fig. 3). Other leading exhibitors included Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and Ernst Fritsch.
In 1923 von Garvens ran into financial difficulty. His gallery was closed down and part of his collection was sold. Wildwest next appeared in exhibitions held by the great German dealer Alfred Flechtheim in Berlin and Düsseldorf in 1927. Under the title 'George Grosz und Kongo Skulpturen', Wildwest was hung alongside twenty-five other works by Grosz painted between 1914 and 1927. The painting then went missing and was not exhibited for fifty years. Until very recently Grosz scholars had feared the picture was lost or destroyed, the unhappy fate of several other major pictures of this early period. Wildwest was recently re-discovered hanging in a discreet private collection having been purchased by the father of the present owner some forty years ago.
Wildwest is to be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Grosz's paintings which is currently being prepared by Ralph Jentsch. We would like to extend our thanks to Peter Grosz. The painting has also been requested for the forthcoming exhibition George Grosz: The Berlin Years taking place at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice, between March and May 1997.
We are extremely grateful to Ralph Jentsch for his extensive research and major contribution to this catalogue entry.