Artwork · 1926 · Symbolic painting

Eclipse of the Sun

1926 · Oil on Canvas
Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington NY
★ 6.3 editorial score

Around a council table a headless authority figure sits with bloody militarists and a fat industrialist who whispers in his ear, a blinkered donkey above and a skeleton below, the sun eclipsed by a blank dollar sign. George Grosz packs Eclipse of the Sun with savage symbols of Weimar Germany's corruption - the collusion of capital, the military, and a brainless populace. Now on Long Island, it is among the most ferocious political paintings of its era, a biting allegory of greed, militarism, and blind obedience leading a darkened nation toward catastrophe.