Central Park at Night

Prints and Drawings

1936

George Grosz
American, born Germany, 1893-1959

Fearing escalating Nazi antagonism in his native Germany, George Grosz took a job teaching drawing in New York in 1932, and by 1933 he had become a permanent resident. Although he was at first overwhelmed by the size and pace of New York, he later confessed that it had an immediate effect on his art. His work became less overtly political, and he experienced “a continual shifting from hard and sharp lines to soft colours and gracious contours.” He sketched the people and sights of the city almost continually, turning these spontaneous drawings into more finished works in his studio.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: George Grosz
Title: Central Park at Night
Place: Germany (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1936
Medium: Watercolor, with gouache and touches of pen and black ink, selectively gum varnished, on ivory wove paper
Inscriptions: Signed recto, lower left, in black ink: "Grosz 36"
Dimensions: 50.6 × 35.5 cm (19 15/16 × 14 in.)
Credit Line: Olivia Shaler Swan Memorial Collection
Reference Number: 1941.483

Birgit Möckel, George Grosz in Amerika 1932-1959 (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), p. 496, no. 217, fig. 39.

North Canton, Ohio, The Little Art Gallery, Dec. 1948, no cat.
New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, “George Grosz,” Feb. 13-Apr. 11, 1954, pp. 25, 27 and 61, cat. 56 (ill.); also Kansas City, Nelson Atkins Museum, May 1-May 31, 1954; Pasadena Art Institute, May-July 25, 1954; and the San Francisco Museum of Art, Aug. 17-Sept. 19, 1954.
Palm Beach, Fla., The Society of the Four Arts, “Drawings from the Art Institute of Chicago,” Jan. 5-27, 1974, cat. 25.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Modern in America: Works on Paper, 1900-1950s,” Jan. 30-May 3, 2010, no cat.

Sold by the Walker Galleries, New York, to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1941.

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