The Avenue of Success

George GroszWW-1930-060657

1930·Watercolor, with brush and brown ink, on grayish-white wove paper·67 × 49 cm (36 × 28 in.)

<p>Invited to teach in New York in 1932, George Grosz became a permanent resident in 1933. The artist created <em>The Avenue of Success</em> as one of 20 illustrations for a 1935 collection of short stories by the American author O. Henry. In this watercolor, Grosz depicted the story’s denouement, in which one character—fresh from cheating a tourist out of $140 and rewarding himself with a fat cigar—lectures a vagabond denizen of the park on the value of work. Viewed in light of the Great Depression, the figures represent the extremes of capitalist economics, making explicit the fact that the “avenue of success” is a two-way street.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1930
Medium: Watercolor, with brush and brown ink, on grayish-white wove paper
Dimensions: 67 × 49 cm (36 × 28 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: George Grosz

Artist

George Grosz

Painting

George Grosz was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity groups during the Weimar Republic. He emigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. Abandoning the style and subject matter of his earlier work, he exhibited regularly and taught for many years at the Art Students League of New York. In 1959 he returned to Berlin, where he died shortly afterwards.

Berlin, Germany

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