Die Familie (The Family)

Berlin-born draughtsman and painter George Grosz is known for his grim social-realist style, which he developed during Germany’s tumultuous inter-war period. Through his biting social critiques, often presented as crude line drawings, Grosz sought to wage a critical campaign against German society and its institutions, and to bear witness to the trauma of a period defined by social, political, and economic struggle. The German military and war profiteers, many of them comprising the German aristocracy and middle-class, were popular subjects of his merciless satires. In The Family, Grosz caricatures and ridicules a bourgeois couple strolling leisurely in mountainous landscape. Their middle-class status is revealed by their clothing: his hat, fitted walking coat and trousers, celluloid collar and tie, glasses, and cane; her dirndl and hat, a fashionable adaptation of South German folk costume, which are, in Grozs’ drawing, made transparent to reveal the child in her womb.