GROSZ, George.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Ecce Homo. First edition of Grosz's portfolio of provocative prints lampooning Weimar Germany's decadence and the hypocrisy and seedy eroticism of the prim middle classes. Loosely inserted is a typed letter signed by Grosz with a large and colourful signature, 15 January 1959, thanking a correspondent for an artwork, noting that he had been ill, and stating that a painting remained in his collection.The left-wing artist Grosz was a prominent member of the Dada and New Objectivity groups in Weimar Berlin. Ecce Homo is "a portfolio which many critics judge to be his best work and the one which is probably most notorious. Ecce Homo was the first Grosz publication done by Herzfelde's press which did not portray explicitly political subjects and which did not deal with the betrayal of the workers. It was radical and revolutionary in a different way. It unmasked the private life of the ruling classes in order to discredit them. Ecce Homo was a merciless document of eroticism. Its drawings reduced men to their common animal nature... Many people have looked at the Ecce Homo and have found in it a brilliant document of the night life in Berlin during the inflationary period of the early twenties" (Lewis, pp. 160-163). It resulted in Grosz being fined 6,000 marks for blasphemy.The edition was split into five issues in different formats. This issue, C, is essentially identical to issue A, except the plates are bound, rather than loose, and unsigned.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.