MET came to Douglaston

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) presented a lecture and slide show entitled Glitter and Doom: The Douglaston Connection, on the art of Douglaston resident George Grosz.
The event was staged in conjunction with the Douglaston Historical Society was held at the Community Church of Douglaston, 39-50 Douglaston Parkway on Sunday, February 11 at 3:00 p.m.
Grosz, whose works are currently on display in the MMA’s Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s exhibition, was a caricaturist and communist who fled Germany during the rise of the Nazis to power.
He and other German refugees including Erwin Piscator, a director of experimental theater and films in Germany and founder of the Dramatic Workshop in New York, settled at 202 Shore Road in Douglas Manor.
Born in 1893 Grosz came to America in 1933, and remained in Douglaston for over 20 years. He returned to Germany in 1958 and died in 1959.
The lecture was given by Lewis Kacher, an art expert and authority on German art between the World Wars. Kacher is regular lecturer at the MMA. This lecture, which was organized by the MMA’s Education Department, is part of its Community and Workplace program, an ongoing project that brings events onsite in the five boroughs and within a 50-mile radius of New York City.
Grosz, whose satirical work incensed Hitler who called similar works decadent and had them burned, was a controversial artist even in his time. He poked fun at the rich and corrupt of the Weimar Republic capturing the essence of the turmoil, despair and exuberant creativity of the period.
According to the MMA, when Grosz left Germany he brought one of his most important works, Eclipse of the Sun, to help defray expenses. The painting found its way into the hands of a young Greek immigrant, who not having a wall large enough in either his apartment or his Long Island home - kept it rolled up. He did occasionally exhibit it to friends who considered it a cartoon and neither liked it or suspected its value.
When it was discovered that the painting was by a famous artist the young man sold it to the Heckscher Museum in Huntington for $15,000 of which he only got ten. Today the painting is valued at more than $15 million.
The exhibition at the MMA will run until Monday, February 19.