Art: Nightmarish German

"From my first birthday," the late George Grosz once told a friend, "I was homesick for America." As a boy in Germany, he devoured James Fenimore Cooper, was not yet 20 when he anglicized his first name. But when in 1932 he finally settled down in the U.S. at the age of 39, his violent, anguished art turned tranquil. Grosz was so entranced by his adopted country that everything he drew or painted—landscapes, cityscapes, nudes—was happy and uncritical. He later recovered some of his bite, but his early German work remains the most arresting....