Edited by Peter Nisbet, with contributions by Catherina Lauer, Beth Irwin Lewis, Peter Nisbet, and Beeke Sell Tower

191 pages, 10 1/2 x 9", 287 illustrations, 20 in color. 1993.

ISBN 0-916724-83-2 (paper), $24.95

This book explores surprising sides of the former Berlin Dada activist George Grosz (1893 - 1959), who has been known mainly for his acerbic drawings of the teens and twenties that mocked the decadent ruling class and the hypocritical petit bourgeois. The sketchbooks, however, encompass a broader array of themes, styles, and functions, ranging from childhood drawings, caricature, satire, landscapes, and studies of the nude, to teaching instructions and sketches of people and street scenes. Stretching from the artist's early beginnings in his home town of Stolp (today in Poland) to his late work in the United States, where he settled in 1933, the almost 200 sketchbooks offer new insights into the artist's development and reveal him as a scrutinizing, yet witty and humane observer of his close surroundings. The catalogue contains four essays, each analyzing and illustrating one significant sketchbook, and a complete summary catalogue of all extant sketchbooks.