G E O R G E G R O S Z E C C E H O M O
Grosz’s Ecce Homo, a portfolio of 84 lithographs and 16 coloured reproductions printed by offset lithography, was published in January of 1923, though many of the original drawings were completed some years before. e suite depicts a decrepit Berlin, its sole inhabitants the lecherous and begrimed, middle-aged, middle-class society whose grotesque lives spill wantonly from boudoirs and bar rooms into the city streets.
edition size: the series was published in 5 editions, with a total of 10,000 printings. Of these, the first two ‘deluxe’ editions and countless copies of the other three editions have almost entirely been lost to the public book-burnings of the Nazis in 1933, though in 1965 the printing firm Brussel and Brussel reproduced the third edition on smaller paper and at a reduced edition size, as did the Grove Press a year later. e prints offered here are from the original and more scarce 1922 ough Grosz’s images captured the seething printing of that edition, their colour and corruption that had grown out of hyper- depth of line much richer than the later inflation and the political turmoil of the reprints. early 1920s, they were ill received by the authorities. Following their publication, Grosz’s work has the objective power of Goya’s Grosz was prosecuted for offending the sense Disasters of War, and it is remarkable that in of modesty and morality of the German public; such a hostile environment and with such 24 of the plates were confiscated; a great provocative material he survived the wrath of number of the original drawings were those he lampooned. Writing on the volatile destroyed; Grosz and his associates were Germany of the 1920s, Grosz remarked that each fined, Grosz’s total penalties across the he was a minute part of this chaos . . . the splinter trial amounting to 6,000 marks. that was miraculously saved when the wood went up in the flames of barbarism. We can be e attention Ecce Homo received from the thankful, too, that some of his work escaped establishment was in part due to its huge with him.