Little Man

Little Man — George Grosz. 1917.

Medium: Pen and brush and black ink on cream wove tracing paper. Dimensions: 25 × 20.1 cm (9 7/8 × 7 15/16 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

This evocative drawing exemplifies George Grosz’s interest in creating symbolic self-portraits. Here we see Grosz himself seated at a table, with a cityscape behind him and a “little man” before him. During World War I, he often inserted such figures into paintings, drawings, and prints as a means of self-parody and social commentary. In fact, one scholar has suggested that here the “little man” represents the artist in mannequin form and that therefore the work is a double self-portrait.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.