The Avenue of Success

Invited to teach in New York in 1932, George Grosz became a permanent resident in 1933. The artist created The Avenue of Success as one of 20 illustrations for a 1935 collection of short stories by the American author O. Henry. In this watercolor, Grosz depicted the story’s denouement, in which one character—fresh from cheating a tourist out of $140 and rewarding himself with a fat cigar—lectures a vagabond denizen of the park on the value of work. Viewed in light of the Great Depression, the figures represent the extremes of capitalist economics, making explicit the fact that the “avenue of success” is a two-way street.