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A painting of a nutcracker doll and a figure of a rooster or a chicken.

The painting shows a male nutcracker doll with a reddish-brown coat, gray trousers, and high black boots. A rifle is on his left side, he wears a round gray hat with white and black decorations. He has white hair and a beard, black wavy moustache and blue eyes. To this left is a figure of a rooster or chicken with blue and brown feathers. In the back, a long rectangle with an arch near the top. In the upper left, an undulating brown mass with pointed peaks rises to the top against blue sky with dark gray clouds.

Gallery Text

Grosz is best known for his satirical drawings and print series of the late 1910s and ’20s attacking the German military, judiciary, church, and bourgeois society. While Grosz explicitly targeted Hitler in earlier works (including a major drawing in the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s collection), here he expresses his anti-militarism and disillusionment with Germany through a surreal assemblage of Germanic kitsch and clichés. Against the backdrop of a castle rising above a pine forest, a monumental nutcracker alludes to the rise of nationalist militarism in the years preceding the Nazi seizure of power. Threatened by the Nazis for being both a modern artist and a critic of the regime, Grosz fled Germany in 1933. Nutcracker remained in the artist’s personal collection throughout his life, and his son and daughter-in-law donated it to the museum in 1994.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1994.129
People
George Grosz, American (Berlin, Germany 1893 - 1959 Berlin, Germany)
Title
Nutcracker
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1931
Culture
German
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/218157

Location

Location
Level 1, Room 1520, Modern and Contemporary Art, Art in Germany Between the Wars
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Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
70 x 50 cm (27 9/16 x 19 11/16 in.)
framed: 91.4 x 71 x 3.3 cm (36 x 27 15/16 x 1 5/16 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: in white paint at l.r.: Grosz

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Lilian and Peter M. Grosz, Princeton, NJ, gift; to Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1994.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of Lilian and Peter M. Grosz, A.B. 1950
Copyright
© Estate of George Grosz / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Accession Year
1994
Object Number
1994.129
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
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Exhibition History

  • A Decade of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions from the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Central and Northern Art and Design from 1880 to the Present, Harvard University Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 04/19/2000 - 07/09/2000
  • 32Q: 1500 Art in Germany Between the Wars (Expressionism-Interwar), Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 03/28/2024
  • 32Q: 1520 Art in Germany Between the Wars (Interwar and Bauhaus), Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 03/28/2024 - 01/01/2050

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu