"The White General," George Grosz (1919)
Description:
"The White General" by George Grosz, 1919.
Like his colleague Otto Dix, George Grosz was profoundly influenced and deeply effected by serving in the army during World War I. He wound up in a military asylum for the shell-shocked and insane just before the war ended.
"'I was disappointed,' he wrote, 'not because the war was lost, but because the people had tolerated it and suffered it for so long a time, refusing to follow the few voices that were raised against the mass slaughter.' His voice was raised for all time in The White General, a haunting portrait of a fanatical Prussian general, his sword bloodied, surrounded by corpses, relentless and unyielding in his pursuit of death. Grosz made dozens of satirical drawings of the officer class for whom he held a lifelong hatred."1
Related Resources from Facing History:
- FACING HISTORY CAMPUS -- Analyzing Visual Images. This teaching strategy document created by a Facing History and Ourselves program associate is a helpful tool for bringing art into your classroom.
1 From Ralph E. Shikes, The Indignant Eye: The Artist as Social Critic in Prints and Drawings from the Fifteenth Century to Picasso (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 288.