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George Grosz (German, 1893-1959)

Mann und Frau (Man and Woman), 1926

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Gefährliche Straße (Dangerous Street) - George Grosz - 1918

A visionary fusion of Expressionist fervour and Cubo-Futurist fragmentation, these dynamic, angular cross-sections of gritty, urban form and imagery conjure a fractured and simultaneist image of war-time Berlin as a frenetic, bubbling cauldron of decadence, death, gaudy glamour and crime. Often suffused by an all-encompassing field of electric red light that falls over everything in the manner of Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the Masque of the Red Death, these hell-fire visions of city life offer a sequence of kaleidoscopic portraits of modernity gone mad. They are essentially, as the Expressionist poet, Theodor Däubler first championed them, ‘apocalyptic pictures’: dystopian visions of metropolitan life that reveal the Babylon of Berlin to be what another contemporary critic, (the writer and philosopher, Salomo Friedländer), wittily referred to as a ‘Dadantesque Inferno’.

Christie’s, London Oil on canvas 47.3 x 65.3 cm (18 5/8 x 25 ¾ in.)

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Born on this day. Carlo Mense, May 13, 1886, Rheine - August 11, 1965, Königswinter, German painter of Rhenish Expressionism and New Objectivity. He was a professor at the State Academy of Arts and Crafts in Breslau.

Self-Portrait, 1918

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Accadde Oggi 1930 by Nicola Perscheid

L'attrice Ossi Oswalda , 1925-27

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Max Ernst (German, 1891-1976) The Meeting of the Friends, 1922 Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 193 cm. Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Max and his Dada/Surrealist pals. Those pictured (from left to right by number): #1 - René Crevel (French writer, 1900-35) #2 - Philippe Soupault (French writer, poet, novelist, critic, and political activist, 1897-1990) #3 - Hans Arp (Alsatian sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist, 1886-1966 -- co-founder of Dada movement) #4 - Max Ernst (seated, green jacket) #5 - Max Morise (French artist, writer & actor, 1900-73 -- standing, red jacket) #6 - Fyodor Dostoevsky! (the great Russian writer -- imaginary "friend" seated to right of Ernst) #7 - Raffaelo Sanzio! (Italian Renaissance great -- another imaginary "friend" standing to right of Morise) #8 - Théodore Fraenkel (French writer, seated w/ red jacket) #9 - Paul Éluard (French surrealist poet, 1895-1952 -- standing, brown jacket) #10 - Jean Paulhan (French writer, literary critic and publisher, director of the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française, 1884-1968 -- seated, beige jacket) #11 - Benjamin Péret (French surrealist poet, 1899-1959 -- guy with monocle) #12 - Louis Aragon (French poet and novelist, 1897-1982 -- Future surrealist "boss man" & Stalinist) #13 - André Breton (French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, 1896-1966 -- Principal founder of Surrealism) #14 - Johannes Theodor Baargeld (German painter and poet, 1892-1927 -- in front of Breton) #15 - Giorgio de Chirico (Italian proto-surrealist painter, 1888-1978) #16 - Gala Éluard (1892-1964, the "surrealist Madonna" -- wife of Paul Éluard and then Salvador Dali!) #17 - Robert Desnos (French surrealist poet, 1900-45)

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Die Elektrische - Otto Dix - 1919

The present work was executed in 1919, the year in which Otto Dix became a founding member of the Dresden 'Secession Group 1919'. This idiosyncratic and pivotal work draws heavily on Dadaism with its collaged elements. The combination of painterly texture and the magpie-like inclusion of found objects epitomises one of the defining dialogues of modernism as the artist moved increasingly towards such Dadaist tactics for a short while, particularily during the following year when he became friends with George Grosz. This bold new style found many supporters, including the renowned art dealer, Johanna Ey, the first owner of the present work. Ey's longstanding patronage of the avant-garde helped to gain them international recognition, and not before long Dix's extraordinary experiments caught the attention of other Dada artists such as Kurt Schwitters, whose own distinctive style would soon come to define the movement.

Oil and assemblage on panel 46 x 37cm (18 1/8 x 14 5/8 in.

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Krieg und Leichen - Die letzte Hoffnung der Reichen (War and Corpses - The last Hope of the Rich) John Heartfield, 1932

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Otto Dix (German. 1891-1969) Zirkusscene (Circus Scene), 1923. Watercolor, coloured chalk, sprayed silver bronze, pencil and collage on paper. @Sold at auction Dec. 03, 2020

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Otto Dix (German, 1891-1969) Portrait of the Painter Hans Theo Richter and his Wife Gisela, 1933

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Cover of Jugend magazine, 1927

Jugend (German for 'Youth') (1896–1940) was an influential German arts magazine. Founded in Munich by Georg Hirth who edited it until his death in 1916, the weekly was originally intended to showcase German Arts and Crafts, but became famous for showcasing the German version of Art Nouveau instead. It was also famed for its "shockingly brilliant covers and radical editorial tone" and for its avant-garde influence on German arts and culture for decades, ultimately launching the eponymous Jugendstil ('Youth Style') movement in Munich, Weimar, and Germany's Darmstadt Artists' Colony.

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George Grosz Pillars of Society (1926) Oil on canvas, 108 x 200 cm

The painting is a deeply sarcastic portrait of the German elite classes that supported fascism. Like many of his paintings from this era he satirized what he believed to be Germany's corrupt, bourgeois society. In this painting Grosz uses his skills as a caricaturist to produce vivid, grotesque, marbled portraits of those who controlled society. Businessmen, clergy and generals, are all depicted not as the polished, refined gentlemen of the Academy's art, but as vicious, selfish, hardened individuals

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Wilhelm Heise (1892 - 1965) Fireworks, from Jugend 1929

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Wilhelm Heise (1892 - 1965) City by night, from Jugend 1927

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George Grosz (German, 1893-1959)

Varieté, 1918

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George Grosz, Berlin, 1930

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Richard Ziegler (German, 1891-1992) Berliner Tageblatt, 1927-28, pastel watercolor gouache. Berlinische Galerie Berlin.