Last Day

Last Day — George Grosz. 1934.

Medium: Watercolor, with touches of gouache, over graphite, selectively gum(?) varnished, on ivory wove paper. Dimensions: 70 × 52.5 cm (27 9/16 × 20 11/16 in.).

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

Grosz left Germany only eighteen days before Hitler seized power in January 1933. Because of his relentless political satire and criticism of the state, he would undoubtedly have been the target of persecution and execution by the new Nazi regime. Between 1933, when he arrived in New York, and 1936, he worked on a series of watercolors representing his first impressions of the me­tropolis. The Last Day does seem to be based on the Manhattan skyline, but Grosz's treahnent of it is more a fore­shadowing of his apocalyptic paintings of the late 1930s. Grosz mounted an exhibition of his watercolors at Alfred Stieglitz's An American Place gallery in 1934-35.

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.