Relevance of Georg Grosz’s Weimar-era drawings to promoting social justice and health equity in contemporary society

The arts and humanities can direct attention to the health-threatening effects of adverse living and working conditions and the political and economic systems that spawn them. Most of these efforts aim to improve healthcare by promoting empathy and sensitivity among health professionals towards patients and improving clinical skills. However, less effort is devoted towards improving living and working conditions—the structural and social determinants of health—that cause illness and make managing illness difficult. Using the arts and humanities to suggest how society could be changed to promote health is even less common, especially in regard to our economic system of capitalism. In this paper, we consider how the acerbic art of Georg Grosz, which critiqued the political, economic and social life of Weimar-period Germany, may find renewed relevance to the contemporary scene in Canada and other nations under the thrall of neoliberal approaches to governance. We suggest that Grosz’s art can be a rich stimulus for promoting social justice and health equity through reflection and discussion, research, and then action to direct attention to how living and working conditions threaten health and how the economic and political systems that create these health-threatening conditions can be reformed or replaced. These activities can take place in classrooms, as part of professional development activities, or form the basis of research studies and advocacy efforts. Evidence of the usefulness of this approach obtained through discussions with undergraduate health studies students is presented.