ECCE HOMO [AUSGABE C COMPLETE WITH 16 COLOR PLATES]
Berlin: Malik-Verlag, 1923. First edition, Edition C. Softcover. Folio. [4] 84 b/w plates, XVI color plates. Original stiff tan illustrated cotton wraps with brown lettering on cover. Title page printed in orange. Sixteen watercolors reproduced in high quality color offset and eighty-four drawings reproduced lithographically. The content of edition C was issued as the edition A but was not signed. Contains lists of lithographs and watercolor reproductions at front, details about variant editions at rear.
Ecce Homo is considered one, if not the most important work by George Grosz. It drastically paints settings illustrating the moral decadence prevalent in the postwar Weimar Republic. It illustrates the seedy eroticism and hypocrisy of the German middle class, particularly that of Berlin. The protagonist of his drawings can, at times, be identified as real persons living in Berlin.
Grosz and the two owners of the Malik Verlag, Julian Gumperz and Wieland Herzfelde, were prosecuted for displaying and selling obscene pictures in Ecce Homo. They were prosecuted and in February 1924 sentenced to pay 500 Gold Marks each and 17 of the drawings as well as five watercolors were to be removed from the publication and respective printing plates destroyed. However, national and international press defended Grosz and by extension the freedom of expression. In May 1933 Grosz was declared "degenerate" by the Nazi regime and most of the remaining printed Ecce Homo books and portfolios were burned. As a result surviving editions are rare and modern reproductions had to use surviving print facsimiles to recreate certain images.
Text in German. Binding with some wear along edges, light fraying at head and a half inch chip at tale of spine. Covers lightly rubbed. Some staining , probably from removed Ex-Libris on inside front cover and very light staining on inside cover and front free endpaper. Good- to very good+ condition. Item #56066
Price: $4,000.00