?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
GEORGE GROSZ Blonde Nude turning, seen from behind.
Watercolor on cream wove paper, circa 1929. 655x485 mm; 25 3/4x19 1/4 inches. Signed in pencil, lower right recto. Dated "Berlin 1929" and inscribed "2. blond Nude" and "Trautenaustrasse" in pencil, verso. Inscribed "No. 210 Cassirer" in pencil, lower left recto. Ex-collection private collection; acquired Sotheby's, New York, October 8, 1986, lot 224.
Exhibited "George Grosz. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen," Bruno Cassirer, Berlin, 1929.
The inscription verso refers to Grosz's residence in Berlin, at Trautenaustrasse 12, from 1928-33. These were particularly turbulent years for the artist, beginning with his prosecution in 1928 for blasphemy following the publication of some anticlerical drawings. Bitterly anti-Nazi, Grosz left Germany shortly before Hitler came to power, accepting an invitation to teach the summer semester at the Art Students League, New York, in June 1932. Though he returned briefly to Germany during the winter of 1932-33, he returned to New York in mid-January 1933 for most of the remainder of his career.
