After almost two and a half years, the small Grosz Museum in Berlin is closing again – earlier than originally planned. The project for works by the painter, graphic artist and caricaturist George Grosz (1893-1959) was initially planned to run for up to five years. Despite a lot of funding, however, there is a big gap in achieving the goal of operating the museum without loss, the George Grosz Association in Berlin announced.
Nevertheless, the initiators draw a positive conclusion. “The small Grosz Museum in the former gas station was a great temporary solution,” said the association’s chairman, Ralf Kemper. “We couldn’t be happier with what we have achieved, because George Grosz is on everyone’s lips again.” They want to “close at the peak,” said co-chairman Pay Matthis Karstens.
Opening in May 2022
The current special exhibition “What kind of times are these? Grosz, Brecht & Piscator” is running until November 25th. The museum in a historic gas station in Schöneberg will then be closed from November 26th. It opened in May 2022.
Since then, the project for the artist, who was born and died in Berlin, has attracted more than 30,000 visitors annually, it was said. In addition to a permanent exhibition, five special exhibitions were shown.
Association wants to help with digitization of Grosz holdings
Georg Gross, whose name was changed to George Grosz as a protest against the First World War, established the expressionist art movement Dada in Berlin together with John Heartfield and his brother Wieland Herzfelde. His political work got him into a lot of legal trouble. Before the Nazis could arrest him, he emigrated to the USA in 1933. He only returned to Berlin shortly before his death in 1956.
The association wants to continue working to make Grosz’s work more visible and to create a permanent home in Berlin. Among other things, it plans to support institutions in digitizing the artist’s holdings.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240923-930-241340/1
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