WW II Art

George Grosz

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"Eclipse of the Sun"

George Grosz was born in Berlin Germany in 1893. He studied art in Dresdon and Berlin, and then began contributing cartoons to German journalist.

WWI George was also sent into the army. A strong opponet of the war he was eventually released as unfit for duty. The following year got called again because they were in need of more soldiers where he was used to transport and gaurd prisoners of war.

"The Suicide" 1916

The army placed him in the army hospital after attempting suicide in 1917. it was decided to execute him but was saved by one of patrons, Count Kessler. He was then discharged from suffering shell shock.

In 1917 he joined with John Heartfield in protesting the German wartime propaganda campaign against the allies This included anti-war drawings such as "Fit For Active Service" in which a well fed doctor pronounces a skeleton fit for duty.

He was active in the left-wing politics and contributed to communist journals. He then joined with artists such as John Heartfield, Otto Dix, and Max Ernst to form the German Dada group. His drawings attacked members of the government and business leaders.

In the late 1920's he directed his attacks at Hitler and the Nazi party where he was then forced to flee from Germany settling in the US.

"Fit for Active Service" 1918

"Hitler in Hell" 1944

"I am Glad to be Back" 1943

"The City" 1916

Otto Dix

2007-12-01T10:16:00.000-08:00

" War Cripples" 1920

Otto Dix was born in Unternhaus Germany in 1981. He later became a student at the Dresdon School of Arts and Crafts. To help pay for his education he accepted money for self portraits of locals.

During WWI he volunteered for the German Army. He was sent to the western front in 1915 where he served as a non-commissioned officer with a machine gun unit. He was wounded several times during the war and on one occasion he nearly died when a bullet hit his neck.

By the end of the war Dix received the Iron Cross and reached the rank of vice-Sergeant-major.

After the war Dix developed left-wing views and his paintings and drawings became increasingly political. Like other German artists such as John Heartfield and George Grosz, Dix was angry about the way that the wounded and crippled ex-soldiers were treated in Germany. This was reflected in paintings such as "War Cripples", "Butchers Shop", and "War wounded".

Dix joined with other artists who had fought in the first WW to put on a traveling exhibition of paintings called No More War. During this period he had also made use of photographs that had been taken of German soldiers who had been badly disfigured by the war.

In 1933 when Hitler came into power, the Nazi government disliked his anti-military paintings and had arranged for him to be sacked, and in the process managed to destroy all of his anti-war paintings.

"Storm Troopers Advancing under Gas." 1924

"Flanders" 1934 This painting shows a scene from the Western front. In the picture dead bodies float in water-filled shell-holes while those soldiers still alive resemble rotting trees.

"Metropolis" 19278. Dix shows himself as a war cripple entering the city Berlin and being greeted by a row of prostitutes.

"War Wounded"

Max Ernst

2007-12-01T09:08:00.000-08:00

"The Elephany Celebes" 1921

Max Ernst was born April 2, 1891, in Bruhl Germany. He began painting while attending the University of Bonn. During WWI he sered in the German army, which was a depressing time in his life because he wasn't able to paint.

In 1922, he returned to the artist community at Montparnasse in Paris. He was a central figured in the Surrealist movement at the time, and in 1925 he invented a graphic art technique called frontage, which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images.

With the outbreak of WWII, he was arrested by french authorities for being a "hostile alien". Thanks to some of his artists friends he was discharged a few weeks later. Soon after the French occupation of the Nazis, he was arrested again, but managed to escape and flee to America with the help of Peggy Guggenheim.

Arriving in 1941 they were married the following year. While living in America he had a successful career. He was featured a few times on the cover of Charles Henri Fords American avant-garde magazine the "View". And along with other artists and friends how also fled from the war helped inspire the development of the abstract movement.

"L'Ange du Foyer" 1937

"Europe After the War" 1940-1942

"Die Versuchung des Heiligen Antonius"

John Heartfield

2007-12-01T05:17:00.000-08:00

(1932)

John Heartfield is one of the most important European artists. He was born June 19, 1891. In Germany. In 1918 Heartfield began at the Berlin Dada scene, and he communist party of Germany.

After many protests, violence, and greedy governmental control of the Nazi party and Hitler's Third Reich, Heartfield created art in protest. His work seemed to be humorous condemning the anti-semite and the wealthy industrialist who supported the German army. He witnessed a country of hungry, desolate people in the midst of chaos during the second World War.

Like many German artists of his time, Heartfield was a militant anti-fascist and a communist, but his artwork was also revolutionary when it came to technique and aesthetics. He was one of the very first to explore photomontage as a new means of artistic expression, and some of his sparing designs - stripped down to only a few iconic images combined with text - made him the predecessor of today’s minimalist and postmodernist artists.

"When John Heartfield and I invented photomontage in my South End studio at 5'oclock on a May morning in 1916, neither of us had any inkling of its great possibilities, nor of the thorny yet successful road it was to take. As so often happens in life, we had stumbled across a vein of gold without knowing it."

-George Grosz

"Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf: Away with These Stultifying Bandages!" Photomontage by Heartfield, 1932.

One of his more famous pieces, made in 1935, is entitled Hurrah, die Butter ist Alle! ("Hurray, The Butter is Finished!") It was published on the frontpage of the AIZ in 1935. The photomontage shows a family at a kitchen table, where a nearby portrait of Hitler hangs and the wallpaper is emblazoned with swastikas. The family — mother, father, old woman, young man, baby, and dog — are attempting to eat pieces of metal, such as chains, bicycle handlebars, and rifles. Below, the title is written in large letters, in addition to a quote by Hermann Goering during food shortages. Translated, the quote reads: "Iron has always made a nation strong, butter and lard have only made the people fat".

The text in the original poster is: "5 fingers make a hand! With these 5 grab the enemy!" "The hand has five fingers, capable and powerful, with the ability to destroy as well as create". Later, it is written in bold letters: Open your eyes, open your mouths, close your hands and make a fist.

"War and Corpses: The Last Hope of the Rich." 1932

(1933)

German Artists

2007-12-01T05:10:00.000-08:00

Following the end of WW II the art of the “Informal” emerged as an international artistic phenomenon. Many German artists considered abstract painting to be a liberation from, and the only valid alternative to, realistic art. The powerful, often anarchic desire for expression and the feeling of liberation during or after dictatorship and war can be felt in the works of Heartfield, Ernst, Dix, and Grosz.

The Germans

2007-12-01T04:46:00.000-08:00

Nazism refers primarily to the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler; and the policies adopted by the government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, a period also known as the Third Reich. The official name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party, Nazism was the main form of National Socialism that emerged after World War I, and often viewed as a form of Fascism. It seemed to be sparked by anger after the Treaty of Versailles and what was considered a "Jewish/Communist conspiracy" to humiliate the Germans after WWI.

On January 5, 1919, the party that eventually became the Nazi Party was founded under the name German Workers' Party by Anton Drexler, along with six other members. German intelligence authorities sent Hitler, a corporal at the time, to investigate the German Workers' Party. As a result, party members invited him to join after he impressed them with the speaking ability he displayed while arguing with party members. Hitler joined the party in September 1919, and he became the propaganda boss. Hitler ousted Drexler and became the party leader on July 29 1920.

WWII: Just a quick reminder!

2007-12-01T04:14:00.000-08:00

After years of German appeasement and the Munich Conference, when Germany under Hitler invaded the Polish Corridor, both Britain and France declared war. In order to avoid a two front war like that of World War I Hitler signed a ten-year nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. They agreed to split lands conquered in Eastern Europe. On August 31, 1939 Germany invaded Poland with a massive and quick attack known as blitzkrieg. Poland was defeated by September 27 and Germany took the western portion while the Soviet Union took the eastern part.

After a six-month break in fighting, on April 9, 1940 Germany defeated Denmark in less than a day. Norway was then defeated in two days. In order to gain access to France Germany defeated Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Through Belgium Germany was able to attack France while avoiding the Maginot defense Line. Under Mussolini Italy also joined Germany's attack on France. On June 22, 1940, France surrendered to Germany. Under the terms of surrender Germany occupied the northern 2/3 of the country. However not all the French gave up the fight against Germany. Charles de Gaulle led an underground resistance against the Nazis.

After France, Hitler then turned his sights toward Britain. He hoped to launch a powerful sea born attack known as Operation Sea Lion. However they were able to defend their country and was successful in holding off the German attack. The United States aided Britain by passing laws such as the Lend and Lease Act, which supplied Britain with weapons but not troops. Roosevelt hoped that America could be the "arsenal of democracy." US ships guarded British merchant ships traveling on the Atlantic.

The Germans knew they were defeated in England so they began to attack Eastern Europe. Germany first defeated Greece and Yugoslavia. Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary allied with Hitler and the axis powers. Germany broke its treaty and invaded the Soviet Union, surrounding Leningrad and Moscow.

Japan began to conquer lands in Asia as Germany was in Europe. It first conquered the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931 and then invaded China itself in 1937. When the United States felt that Japan was threatening US controlled Philippines as well as other European controlled colonies it cut off vital supplies that Japan needed for its war effort. In retaliation, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese devastated the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. The United States retaliated by declaring war on Japan and entered World War II against the Axis powers. The Allies won victories at The Battle of the Coral Sea and at Midway, turning the tide of war in the Allies favor. The United States then began island hopping conquering Japanese holdings.

In North Africa, the United States under Eisenhower and the British under Montgomery won a huge victory against Germany. The Nazis suffered further setbacks when the Russians took advantage of the winter to defeat the Germans at Stalingrad. Soviet troops then began to win victory after victory against the Germans in the Soviet Union.

The Allies then began to invade Europe through Italy. They conquered Sicily and Italy changed alliances, switching from axis support to ally support. The "nail in the coffin" for the German Third Reich came on June 6, 1944 when the Allies launched an invasion code-named D-Day on Normandy, France. The Allied forces pushed the Germans east as the Soviet Union pushed German troops west. The two sides met at Berlin where Germany was forced to surrender. Hitler could not bear defeat and killed himself.

Meanwhile, the Japanese were able to continue to hold off allied forces. Truman decided to end the war against Japan quickly and decisively with the use of the United State's secret weapon, the atomic bomb. Bombs were dropped on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing 120,000 nearly instantly. Shocked by amount killed Emperor Hirohito surrendered on September 2, 1945. Overall, over 40 million people were killed in the war.