U.S.A. Gross returned from the war in a poor psychological condition. Whilst he had been tempted to return to Paris, he realized that his presence there in the immediate aftermath of the war would not have been a good idea. His wife, Hildegard Rath, who was also an artist, decided to emigrate to the USA. Given Gross’s traumatic war experiences, it was hoped that a totally new environment would speed his rehabilitation. 1948 Exhibition: Macbeth Gallery Whilst living mostly in New Hampshire Gross had two major exhibitions at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. The 1948 exhibition booklet is prefaced with the following introduction: “Hermann Gross is one of the many war casualties forced to leave the scenes of his youth and early manhood to seek refuge in a still free land where the opportunity is present to work out in his own way long cherished ideals of Christianity and their application to human conduct. Always religious in the best sense of the term, the recent world holocaust has further strengthened his unshakeable belief in the teachings of the Scriptures as the only true foundation for man’s dealing with man. To quote his own words: “Out of the nothing of the devastation of Europe, it seems to me that the Bible and its message is a salvation. There is nothing which is not reflected there. Its themes for me are not only effervescent actualities, they are inexhaustible. Their symbolisms are everlasting and modern in their significance, and in interpreting them, it is I who stand before my work as the one who has received. To give form to these everlasting themes is for me a resurrection.” The following reviews of his paintings in his two exhibitions in New York show that Gross was seen as a serious artist: New York Times, 12 December 1948 : At Macbeth’s Hermann Gross’s religious imagery in gouache and watercolour, a cross bred of Blake and Roualt , are deeply imagined and utterly convincing within the limits of his own quite personal use of medium. And the design also carries personal conviction. Art Digest: 15 December 1948 Hermann Gross, in his first showing in the United States at the Macbeth Gallery, creates an impression of genuine religious fervour. Not only are his watercolours and drawing concentrated on biblical themes but their content is unmistakeably inspired and directed by conviction in the message of true Christianity. Although the songs are not new, they are still sung in this instance with unrestricted vigour and unrelenting accent on the ethical tones. New York Herald Tribune: 19 December 1948 Hermann Gross is showing a group of recent watercolours and drawings at the Macbeth gallery through this month. His watercolours are rather murky and imbued with a religious if somewhat abstruse air, but they do make a strong appeal to the emotions, and in “Gesmas — The Malefactor to the Right of Christ and Crucifixion he has reached his climax. His drawings are heavy but sometimes come close to profundity, particularly his rendering of The Malefactor to the Left of Christ. Art News: December 1948 His work, forbidden and branded as degenerate by the Nazis, has passed through the crucible of war-torn Europe and shows in a group of forceful, haunting compositions in watercolour and crayon, the regeneration of deep artistic and moral convictions. His favourite themes are inspired by the Bible, from which he extracts images that run the gamut from a powerful expressionism to geometrically organized abstractions. The Sun 19 December 1948 The Hermann Gross drawings in the Macbeth Gallery are exceedingly sombre and somewhat confused but if anybody has a right to be sombre and confused it is Mr Gross for he is one of the displaced artists from Germany obliged to start a new career in a new land. He is religious, occupying himself with themes from many angles but not arriving, on the present occasion, at any very satisfactory compositions. He has a leaning toward the abstract, and the most moving of his compositions is the most abstract of all, the one called The Malefactor to the Left of Christ, and in it there is a shaft of light penetrating the darkness which must be allowed to be dramatic. 1951 Exhibition: Macbeth Gallery The New York Times: 26 January 1951 His watercolours now at the Macbeth Gallery use both abstraction and stylisation as means of expression for his religious subjects. Perhaps his greatest gift is a mastery of smouldering and effective colour, patches of which get put together like a fluid changing mosaic. Obviously, a descendant of the German Expressionists, Gross makes personal use of these idioms. Here is religious painting in a wholly contemporary mode, weakened neither by sentimentality nor adherence to worn- out imagery. The implications reach out into twentieth century living. Curiously, the more abstract of these paintings seem to have the clearest and most forceful impact. New York Herald Tribune: 28 January 1951 Of two artists exhibiting figurative work, Hermann Gross at the Macbeth Gallery is the more dramatic in his paintings of religious subjects. Here, the atmosphere of the show is heavy with movement, the dark and shattered surfaces of the canvasses giving impressions reminiscent of Kokoschka and German Expressionists. Descent from the Cross was one of the paintings exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery in 1951. Strictly speaking, it should be more properly be titled ‘The Lamentation’, as most paintings with the title ‘Descent from the Cross’ – Fra Angelico (1437/40), Roger van der Weyden (1435), Rubens (1612) and Rembrandt (1633). In Gross’s painting we appear to have the three Marys – the Virgin Mary, Mary Cleophas and Mary Magdalene – along with Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. The crown of thorns, which figures prominently in the painting, is usually linked to Joseph of Arithmathea who is believed to have brought Christianity to the Britons in the first century AD. What is interesting about this painting is that Gross has abandoned the intensely dark and forbidding depictions of the Crucifixion painted in a style strongly reminiscent of George Roualt that were produced with obsessive regularity in the immediate post war years. During that time Gross was slowly recovering from the acute physical and psychological trauma he had personally experienced as a conscript in the bloody military retreat of the German army from the Russian Front in the final stages of World War Two. This tempera painting and the way the figures are depicted with great simplicity owes a clear debt to early Byzantine art. Because tempera paint cannot be applied in thick layers as oil paints can, they rarely have the deep colour saturation that oil paintings can achieve. Thus, the colours of an unvarnished tempera painting resemble a pastel – giving a muted and soft tonality. Traditionally also, in Byzantine art the human face is portrayed lacking emotion and possessing all the impassiveness of a mask. It is the spiritual intensity of Byzantine art which enables the viewer to gain some understanding of the mystery of life. The strong influence of Byzantine art can also be seen in the work of Gross’s painting teacher in Paris before World War Two – Picasso.