The exiled painter described his 1944 work as "Hitler as a fascist monster or as an apocalyptic beast." After more than 75 years in a private collection, the masterpiece is now in public hands and was unveiled Tuesday.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020/GFLP
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George Grosz was a pioneer of irreverent Dada art in Berlin, an ardent critic of war and nationalism who went into exile before Hitler seized power in 1933.
In 1944, while living in the US, he completed a painting that portrays Hitler as a monster dictator reigning over an underworld of mass death and destruction. Titled Cain or Hitler in Hell, the masterwork has been privately owned (by the Grosz family) since its creation, but in 2019 was acquired by the German Historical Museum in Berlin (DHM).
The painting was officially unveiled today in Berlin, with Minister of Culture, Monika Grütters, Raphael Gross, President of the German Historical Museum Foundation, and Markus Hilgert, General Secretary of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, in attendance.
Purchased by the DHM with the support of the federal government and the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, the acquisition marks a major coup for the institution as the painting is considered one of the outstanding works created by a German artist in exile after the rise of the Nazi regime.
Hitler in Hell, as it is known, will soon be on view to the public as part of the museum's permanent collection.
Confronting Hitler
"We are very grateful that this important testimony of German exile art during National Socialism could be secured for our collection," said Raphael Gross on February 4 at the official unveiling at the DHM in central Berlin. "Especially with regard to our new permanent exhibition, which we are currently designing, it will be a central object that tells us a lot about the artistic confrontation with Hitler and National Socialism."
Grosz, who gained a reputation for his highly political Dada art during the Weimar Republic, was a World War One veteran who became a trenchant critic of German nationalism and joined the Sparticist uprising in 1918.
As a communist and fierce anti-Nazi who condemned the emergence of fascism throughout Europe, it was no wonder that he emigrated to the US shortly before Hitler came to power in 1933. Soon after, the Nazis labelled his work "degenerate art" and removed it from the public collections in the so-called German Reich.
George Grosz' Dada collage from 1918 mocks the Prussian generals and religious leaders at the heart of a disastrous war Image: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011
By the late 1930s, Grosz began to work again in his New York home, reviving many of his former themes as Hitler fomented world war and news of the Nazi death camps spread. Cain or Hitler in Hell is considered one of the main works of this era. Grosz himself described the picture as a representation of "Hitler as a fascist monster, or as an apocalyptic beast, consumed by his own thoughts."
The artist equated Hitler with the figure of Cain, who in the bible is presented as the archetypal murderer and the first in human history
Repatriating 'degenerate art'
The German Minister of State for Culture, Monika Grütters, noted at the unveiling that many of George Grosz' paintings were in fact destroyed by the Nazis after they confiscated 285 of his works from public collections.
"By purchasing one of his most important paintings, we are making a mark for reparation, and honoring one of the most talented artists in the Weimar Republic," she said. "Since its creation in 1944, the work Cain or Hitler in Hell has lost none of its power."
George Grosz at work in his Long Island studio in 1940Image: Archiv Ralph Jentsch, Rom.
"On the contrary: George Grosz' apocalyptic vision of terror looks like an appeal, like a warning against forgetting, in view of the renewed anti-Semitism in our society," she continued. "It is works of art like this that help us learn the right lessons from history."
Back in Berlin
"This decidedly political picture shows how Grosz develops his critical formal language in exile," said Markus Hilgert of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States. "It is important to me that young people in particular have access to the painting and are able to deal with the artist's critical view of National Socialism."
He added that it was important to fulfill the Grosz family's wish that the painting is shown permanently where Grosz was born and also died. Though the artist became a US citizen in 1938, he returned to his home city with his wife in 1958, where he died a year later.
'Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One' reflects on the brutality of the Great War
Marking a century since the end of World War I, a new exhibition at London's Tate Britain explores how artists responded to the physical and psychological horrors of the "war to end all wars."
Image: IWM (Art.IWM ART 518)
Ypres After the First Bombardment: Christopher R. W. Nevinson, 1916
The British landscape painter presents an aerial view of the Belgian city of Ypres after it was first bombed in 1915, employing the abstract motifs used by cubists and futurists. Nevinson, a devotee of Italian futurism, initially believed the conflict was a sign of progress in the machine age. But after serving as an official war artist in France, he became ardently anti-war.
Image: Museums Sheffield
The Rock Drill: Jacob Epstein, 1913-1914
This "machine-like robot, visored, menacing and carrying within itself its progeny" was initially a futurist symbol of progress, but Epstein decided to rework his sculpture after he became aware of the scale of death as the war unfolded. A drill was removed, and the figure was cut off at the waist, a symbol of modern man suddenly neutered and made impotent by a war that it also started.
Image: The Estate of Jacob Epstein
Wire: Paul Nash, 1918-1919
Having served on the Western Front in France, the British surrealist artist extensively documented life and death amid the trenches in his paintings. As he wrote to his wife in 1917: "Imagine a wide landscape flat and scantily wooded and what trees remain blasted and torn, naked and scarred and riddled. The ground for miles around furrowed into trenches, pitted with yawning holes."
Arise, you dead!: Georges Rouault, 1922-1927
Part of the French artist's War series of Expressionist engravings, Arise, You Dead! appropriates the skeleton, a representation of death in medieval mythology, to reflect on the inevitable futility of battle on the front during the Great War. A Catholic who worked extensively with religious motifs, Rouault was perhaps also commenting on the essential immorality of war.
Image: ADAGCP, Paris and DACS, London 2018
Paths of Glory: Christopher R. W. Nevinson, 1917
This oil painting epitomized Nevinson's hardening view of the ignominy of trench warfare with its portrayal of anonymous dead soldiers laying facedown in the dirt among endless barbed wire. His unwillingness to portray the glories of war meant the work was nearly censored, but before that happened he hung the painting in London and affixed a piece of paper over the bodies that read "Censored."
Image: IWM (Art.IWM ART 518)
Dada Rundschau: Hannah Höch, 1919
Hannah Höch was a pioneer of the photomontage technique that became synonymous with dada, a highly political art that mocked the elites who had plunged the world into war. The kaleidoscope of images and newspaper headlines refers to "gigantic world folly" as epitomized by German leader Friedrich Ebert in bathers, while American President Woodrow Wilson hovers as a "peace angel" above.
Image: DACS, 2018
The Petit Bourgeois Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild Electro Mechanical Tatlin: George Grosz and John Heartfield, 1920
After the war, German artists like Heartfield and Grosz commonly depicted broken bodies with prosthetic limbs, a feature of war survivors who brought home the physical and psychological scars of the "war to end all wars." As a dada sculptural montage, the work also parodies the arrogance of technology and militarism, the lost head simply replaced with a light bulb, a mark of bright ideas.
Image: Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018.
War: Skull: Otto Dix, 1924
This etching was part of Otto Dix's war cycle created in the 1920s that imitated Francisco Goya's famous The Disasters of War prints from a century earlier. Like Goya, Dix, who also served on the front line on the losing side in World War I, darkly evoked the gruesome horror of war with a rotting skull infested with vermin and maggots. His series aimed to "exorcise the experience of war."
Image: Estate of Otto Dix 2018
To the Unknown British Soldier in France: William Orpen, 1921-1928
This controversial painting by the Irish war artist shows a soldier's coffin in a mausoleum draped in a British flag, an army helmet atop. It was modified in 1927 after initially showing two semi-nude soldiers guarding a tomb. One of three commissions to commemorate the Paris Peace Conference, Orpen portrayed "the ragged unemployed soldier and the dead" instead of politicians and diplomats.
