The show currently on view at Gallerie St. Etienne is a perfect compliment to the show now on at MOMA— German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse. Gallerie St. Etienne is one of the great small galleries of New York. They specialize in Austrian and German Expressionism and Outsider Art. All of their shows are accompanied by compelling and scholarly essays:
Grosz, who had a deeply ingrained antiauthoritarianstreak, viewed the war and its aftermath
as a scathing indictment of what he called the “pillars
of society”: the Church, the military and the capitalist
bourgeoisie. He pinned his hopes on Communism, joining
the Party in December 1918. Beckmann believed
that the moral authority once vested in religion had
been ceded to art and that if he could create honest
depictions of the human predicament, people would be
inspired to change. Dix had no such faith in the possibility
of political or spiritual redemption. The world
was brutalized and brutal; he called it as he saw it and
enjoyed provoking outrage for its own sake.
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