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Lot Essay
Figur für Schwejk (The Butcher) is one of a series of watercolour caricatures of urban types that Grosz made in 1927 in preparation for the Piscator-Bühnes production of Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Schwejk. This legendary production, adapted for the stage by Berthold Brecht, directed by Erwin Piscator and incorporating sets, costumes, props and even an animated film backdrop designed by Grosz, was one of the great theatrical spectacles of 1920s Berlin.
Centred on the tortuous adventures of the comic figure of Schwejk, an endearing and bumbling imbecile caught up in the full horror and absurdity of the First World War, the play was a stark satirical indictment of the authoritarian power-structures that had caused and propagated the war and which were still running Germany in its aftermath.
Figur für Schweik is one of a series of watercolour studies showing figures eagerly reading the newspaper and its announcement of the war that Grosz made for the scene where Schwejk voluntarily makes his way to army headquarters for his enlistment into the army at the beginning of the play. Save for Schwejk himself, this scene was populated solely by a procession of cardboard cut-out figures, an officer, a worker, a banker, a gentleman, and here, a butcher. All these figures, engrossed in the war headlines of the newspapers, were affixed to a conveyer belt that, unbeknownst to them, headed also inexorably towards the army enlistment office.
Centred on the tortuous adventures of the comic figure of Schwejk, an endearing and bumbling imbecile caught up in the full horror and absurdity of the First World War, the play was a stark satirical indictment of the authoritarian power-structures that had caused and propagated the war and which were still running Germany in its aftermath.
Figur für Schweik is one of a series of watercolour studies showing figures eagerly reading the newspaper and its announcement of the war that Grosz made for the scene where Schwejk voluntarily makes his way to army headquarters for his enlistment into the army at the beginning of the play. Save for Schwejk himself, this scene was populated solely by a procession of cardboard cut-out figures, an officer, a worker, a banker, a gentleman, and here, a butcher. All these figures, engrossed in the war headlines of the newspapers, were affixed to a conveyer belt that, unbeknownst to them, headed also inexorably towards the army enlistment office.