George Grosz

Like many German artists who came of age during World War I and the Weimar Republic, George Grosz used art as a vehicle for social critique, particularly of the government, military, and upper classes. He vehemently rejected his academic training from idealized antique plaster casts by relentlessly depicting the ugliness of the people around him. He further provoked the disdain and ire of Berlin’s elite through open mockery of and self-indulgent participation in their vices: greed, alcohol, and sex. Here he presents a brazen woman donning her hat, presumably concluding a tryst with a lascivious, bespectacled, elderly man. Grosz emphasizes the unattractive features of the pair: the woman’s bulging thighs and sagging breasts, as well as the pathetic hunger on the face of her partner.