GEORGE GROSZ

(1893-1959)

Russland wird beraubt

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Herrn Ralph Jentsch. This work will be included in the forthcoming George Grosz works on paper catalogue raisonné, currently being prepared.

Provenance
The artist's estate, Munich.
Galerie Tendances, Paris.
Private collection, Madrid (acquired from the above on 12 July 2005).

Exhibited
Dusseldorf, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Damals in Berlin. George Grosz, Zeichnungen der 10er und der 20er Jahre, 28 October - 23 December 1997, no. 40.
Kamakura, The Museum of Modern Art, George Grosz, Berlin - New York, 8 April 2000 - 21 May 2000, no. II-61 (later travelled to Itami & Tochigi).
Paris, Galerie Tendances, George Grosz, Dessins, Berlin 1912 - 1924, 9 April - 25 June 2005.

This work was executed in 1924, the same year the Tsar's grandson Kirill Wladimirowitsch declared himself Tsar in Exile and relatively shortly after the disappearance of the Tsar's treasure during the Civil War of 1918-21. Here we see Tsar Nicholas II fleeing in disarray with a faceless bourgeois companion, while another gleeful and abhorrent capitalist makes off with what we can assume to be the legendary Tsar treasure. Whilst the work was created prior to Grosz's disillusionment with Communism, Grosz travelled to the USSR in 1922 where he met Lenin, Zinoviev, Lunacharsky and other leading members of the Politburo. He stayed for six months before leaving, unimpressed by what he had seen. In this work Grosz wryly speculates that, as in all revolutions, the wealth and treasure of the ruling class unfailingly falls into the hands of those as equally self-interested and debauched as the ill-fated Tsar - and that revolution simply becomes a matter of theft. The works on paper from this period show Grosz as he is best known: as the misanthropic revolutionary, uncompromising satirist and theoretician who used his art to expose and comment on private corruption and public squalor.