God of War

George GroszWW-1940-101073

1940·Oil on canvas·119.5 × 90 cm (47 × 35 3/8 in.)

Produced in New York during the early years of World War II, this painting personifies Germany as Mars, the God of War. Here, the deity appears as a Nazi soldier decorated with a laurel wreath and feathers, his hand raised as if in salute to Hitler. The artist, George Grosz, had a long history of political and social engagement. As early as the 1920s, he and other young artists in Germany began to produce works that critiqued the shortcomings of the Weimar Republic, the country’s first democratically elected government. When the Nazi Party became a mass movement, Grosz recognized that his work would lose political efficacy and become subject of censorship; he immigrated to New York in 1932. In 1936, watching the continued rise of European fascism from afar, he began depicting allegorical, antimilitaristic scenes in drawings and watercolors. Painted in 1940 God of War continues the themes explores in these earlier depictions.

Catalogue

Year: 1940
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 119.5 × 90 cm (47 × 35 3/8 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: George Grosz

Artist

George Grosz

Painting

George Grosz 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 groups during the Weimar Republic. He emigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. Abandoning the style and subject matter of his earlier work, he exhibited regularly and taught for many years at the Art Students League of New York. In 1959 he returned to Berlin, where he died shortly afterwards.

Berlin, Germany

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