Otto Schmalhausen (1890–1958), a draughtsman in Berlin and a close friend of the artist, studied with George Grosz in Berlin and also exhibited with him at the First International DADA Fair in Berlin in 1920. He was married to Lotte Peter, the younger sister of Grosz’s wife Eva. Eva and Lotte were Grosz’s favourite models in the 1920s. They both appear in oil paintings, watercolours and drawings. There are many works in which the women feature either alone, together or as a trio with the artist, sometimes in erotic scenes and situations. Beside the writer and poet Max Herrmann-Neisse, Otto Schmalhausen was Grosz’s closest and most intimate friend. Their lifelong friendship is documented in hundreds of letters they both exchanged. Schmalhausen cultivated the air of a well-to-do English gentleman; however, within his own four walls, the married couple often had huge and tempestuous arguments. Significantly, Grosz also did other portraits of Schmalhausen, one entitled The Hypochondriac and another called Der Haustyrann, the house tyrant.Grosz has portrayed his friend working on a self-portrait in his studio, smoking and with his legs crossed he appears pensive and somewhat irked. The artist has executed this work in his famous ‘razor-sharp’ style – short, bold strokes with the reed pen and pen and ink, which have been executed with the precision of a whip’s lash.

Ralph Jentsch

Literatur: Serge Sabarsky: George Grosz. Die Berliner Jahre. Katalog zur Ausstellung in der Hamburger Kunsthalle. Hamburg 1985.