(b Berlin, 26 July 1893;
d W. Berlin, 6 July 1959).
German painter, draughtsman and illustrator. He is particularly valued for
his caustic caricatures, in which he used the reed pen with notable
success. Although his paintings are not quite as significant as his
graphic art, a number of them are, nonetheless, major works. He grew up in
the provincial town of Stolp, Pomerania (now Slupsk, Poland), where he
attended the Oberrealschule, until he was expelled for disobedience. From
1909 to 1911 he attended the Akademie der Künste in Dresden, where he met
Kurt Günther, Bernhard Kretschmar (1889–1972) and Franz Lenk (b
1898). Under his teacher Richard Müller (1874–1954), Grosz painted and
drew from plaster casts. At this time he was unaware of such avant-garde
movements as Die Brücke, also active in Dresden. In 1912 he studied with
Emil Orlik at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin. A year later he moved to
the Académie Colarossi in Paris, where he learnt a free drawing style that
swiftly reached the essence of a motif.
