“Ecce Homo” occupies a special rank among George Grosz’s most compelling creations. The small series of sixteen watercolors and the later portfolio of prints mercilessly portray society in the Weimar Republic. With a mixture of political outrage, erotic satire, and virtuoso drawing, Grosz created an uncompromising vision of modern city life—garish, ruthless, and full of sarcastic clarity.
This radical assessment of a world in turmoil is inextricably linked to Grosz's conviction that art had to face the realities of its time instead of sugarcoating them. In numerous articles and manifestos from the early 1920s, he rejects the idea of art as a purely aesthetic end in itself: “For me, art is not an aesthetic matter, ... not musical scribbles that can only be felt and guessed at by sensitive, educated people. Drawing must be subordinated to a social purpose again.” (George Grosz, 1924, quoted from: Serge Sabarsky, George Grosz, Die Berliner Jahre, Milan 1985, p. 31).

War and resistance
When World War I broke out, Grosz volunteered for military service in the hope of avoiding frontline deployment. Just one year later, he was discharged due to a medical condition. During this time, he produced his first sketches in Berlin, which would later form the basis of “Ecce Homo.”
In 1917, he was drafted again, but after attempting suicide, Grosz was admitted to a military hospital, charged with desertion, and ultimately sentenced to death. The wealthy patron Count Harry Kessler intervened on his behalf and secured a pardon. These experiences led to a profound rejection of German nationalism. In protest, Grosz anglicized his name—Georg Groß became George Grosz—thereby marking his intellectual distancing from his homeland.
In 1933, a week before Hitler seized power, he and his family emigrated to the United States. The writer Henry Miller later commented: “Can one wonder that he found no place in his work for ‘sweetness and light’? Is it any wonder that he was, as he admits, filled with an utter contempt for all mankind?” (Henry Miller, Ecce Homo, New York 1966, p. ix).




“Ecce Homo”: Grosz's unsparing vision
With an anger that had ripened throughout the war, he created watercolors, drawings, and portfolios that exposed the ruling class— which in Grosz's eyes became increasingly decadent, degenerate, and hypocritical—with caustic satire. In contrast, the lower classes suffered from inflation, poverty, and unemployment.
Grosz captures everyday life in Berlin in precisely observed scenes: drinkers in taverns, patrons of brothels, and social outcasts, always with an eye on the psychological and moral consequences of a life without responsibility and inner truthfulness.
With “Ecce Homo,” Grosz created one of his most radical works: a small series of only sixteen watercolors that is incomparable in its intensity and impact. The title, Latin for “Behold the man,” refers to Pontius Pilate’s words about Christ in the Gospel of John. In these sheets, modern man emerges disfigured, marked by feverish color gradients and sharp, cutting lines. In 1927, Henry Miller described the series with clear, almost shocking conciseness: “They are as naked and ugly, as beautiful and eloquent, as truth itself.” (quoted from: Ecce Homo, New York 1966, p. vii).




“Walzertraum”: Rarity and Accusation
The watercolor “Walzertraum,” created in 1921, is one of the scarce originals from this series to have survived. There are hardly any works from this cycle, not even in museum collections; to date, only three other watercolors have appeared on the international art market.
In the scene, prostitutes move through a series of sexual encounters, surrounded by clients and drinkers. The lecherous male gaze dominates the scene: men are clothed, women are naked—even when they are wearing clothes. Their world is characterized by capital, corruption, and unrestrained sexual excess.
Here, the biblical saying “Ecce Homo” is transformed into a bitterly ironic warning: not to contemplate the divine, but to reveal the depravity of man. Grosz's “man” is the Berlin bourgeois, vain, gluttonous, and morally bankrupt, trapped in an endless theater of lust, excess, and self-destruction.

Scandal, censorship, and response
“Ecce Homo” provoked strong reactions from the very beginning. After the portfolio had been published in 1923—one year after the drawings and watercolors had been released—Malik Verlag, Grosz, and the publishers Julian Gumperz and Wieland Herzfelde were charged with distributing obscene material by the Berlin authorities. Seventeen prints and five watercolor reproductions had to be removed, and the printing plates were destroyed. However, the press, both at home and abroad, recognized Grosz's satirical and socially critical intent.
Under the National Socialists, he was vilified as a “cultural Bolshevik,” and parts of “Ecce Homo” were included in the infamous “Degenerate Art” exhibitions in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg.
Such forms of censorship only confirm what the work was intended to express: that art can no longer remain neutral. Grosz wrote on this subject in 1933: "There is no question that my prints are among the strongest statements against this particular German brutality. Today they are more true than ever—and later, in, forgive me, ‘more humane’ times, they will be shown in the same way that Goya's drawings are shown today..." (George Grosz, 1933, quoted in: Herbert Knust, George Grosz, Briefe 1913–1959, Hamburg 1979, p. 181).
Exposing the repressed aspects of society—its erotic fantasies, class violence, and proto-fascist impulses—Grosz forces Berlin society during the time between the wars to take a close look at itself. His art does not invent depravity; it merely refuses to conceal it. [KA]