Otto DixGroup - H

Early life and artistic influencesOtto Dixwas a anti-war German Expressionist, famous for his unique and grotesque style.Born in 1891 in Untermhaus, Thuringia,where he initially trained in Gera and at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts.In the autumn of 1915 Dix was sent to theWestern Frontwhere he served as a non-commissioned officer with amachine-gununitBy the end of the war in 1918 Dix had won theIron Cross (second class) and reached the rank of vice-sergeant-major.Dix was angry about the way that the wounded and crippled ex-soldiers were treated in Germany which was reflected in his paintings

War cripplesFAMOUS PAINTINGS

Self Potriats

Dixs paintings suggest that he had a tendency to treat his human subjects in a most unflattering fashion.He accentuated their negative qualities as he downplayed there good onesYet his own self-portraits never received such treatment. Dix always presented himself in the finest manner.Self-portrait with a Gunner's HelmetSelf-portrait as Soldier

Self-portrait with EaselPrager Strasse

Along Prague Street, deformed men beg for money and attention.

A woman in a tight pink dress has no time for them. The Nationalists do.

Beside one veteran is a pamphlet entitled, "Jews Out!" The Nazis were not yet a National movement but one of their basic tenets was beginning to disseminate.

Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden

A prototypical Neue Sachlichkeit portrait by German painter Otto Dix (1891-1969) depicting the journalist Sylvia von Harden, a habitue of Berlin's famed Romanisches Cafe.

Dix's critical realism verges on a caricature of the Neue Frau in the Weimar Era, while his style of oil painting and attention to physical details serve to heighten the character's individuality in this fascinating image.War Triptych, 1932

His art refined during the 1920s andculminated in 1929 with the presentation of theWar Triptych.

His gruesome andunindividualized reproduction of the Great War in this painting proposes social and political criticism. He does his critique not only through the content of his painting andthe way he presents his subjects, but also in the form, through the use of the sublime.The War triptych actually consists of 4 distinct parts: the apprehension before the battle, the battle itself, which overhangs a buried soldier, and finally the aftermath. Each part embodies the spirit of the unorganizedWehrmacht movement, an artistic movement that had great members such as KatheKollwitz, Georg Grosz and of course, Otto Dix. Their objective was to perpetuate,through various forms of art, an anti-war movement and a critique of the lack of responsibility took by the governments of their inhuman actions during the war.

FlandersThe Nazis achieved power in 1933 and immediately placed the country on a war footing. Industry began to produce armaments and anti-war voices were quickly silenced. Dix was stipped of his post at Dresden and several of his painting were placed in Reflections of Decadence, an anti-exhibition of modern art. Dix responded with this painting which depicts the waste of Flanders. The dead float in stagnant water while the living resemble rotted stumps. A beautiful sunset sinks below the Allied lines.

FAMOUS PRINTS

Wounded Soldier

Der Krieg [War] 1924 arose out of Dixs own experiences of the horrors of war. As outlined above, he had volunteered for service in the army and fought as a machine-gunner on the Western Front. He was wounded a number of times, once almost fatally. War profoundly affected him as an individual and as an artist, and he took every opportunity, both during his active service and afterwards, to document his experiences. These experiences would become the subject matter of many of his later paintings and are central to the Der Kriegcycle.Dix manipulated the etching and aquatint mediums to heighten the emotional and realistic effects of his meticulously rendered images of horror. He stopped out ghastly white bones and strips of no man's land, leaving brilliant white patches; multiple acid baths ate away at the images, mimicking decaying flesh.

Stormtroops advancing under a gas attack

In this print, Dix has portrayed five soldiers, their faces covered by their gas masks, advancing on an enemy line through No Mans Land while under a gas attack. Despite the fact that these men appear inhuman, they materialize as even more menacing as they move in and out of the haze created by the gas. The landscape they move through consists of mud, shelled trees, barbed wire, and dead bodies. The landscape is heavily shaded and dense and seems to consume the mens bodies which shows that it took sheer effort and strength to navigate the trenches and No Mans Land. The shelled tree on the right looks just as dangerous as any of the modern weapons used during combat due to its pointed limbs representing a demonic pitchfork. The soldier on the far left has gotten snagged on a line of barbed wire representing the many ways in which a soldiers body came under attack.

Night-time encounter with a madmanDescription: A man never knew what he'd encounter on night patrol. Here Dix finds a madman who roams the rubble. It's not clear to which army he's assigned. His uniform is shredded along with his mind. The man represents an indirect threat. In this state, he can't harm an experienced soldier but he can draw the attention of those who can

The original German title of plate 22 is Nachtliche Begegnung mit einem Irrsinnigen: here the word Irrsinnig powerfully conveys the sense that all the neural networks that underpin both one's sense of self and the apparent rational structure of one's world have been utterly torn to shreds. This image dramatically articulates the nightmare-like psychological impact of war on a civilian population.

LATER LIFE AND DEATHDix eventually returned to Dresden and remained there until 1966. After the war most of his paintings were religious allegories or depictions of post-war suffering, including his 1948 Ecce homo with self-likeness behind barbed wire. In this period, Dix gained recognition in both parts of, the then divided, Germany. In 1959 he was awarded the Grand Merit Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany (Groes Verdienstkreuz) and in 1950, he was unsuccessfully nominated for the National Prize of the GDR. He received the Lichtwark Prizein Hamburg and the Martin Andersen Nexo Art Prize in Dresden to mark his 75th birthday in 1967. Dix was made an honorary citizen of Gera. Also in 1967 he received the Hans Thoma Prize and in 1968 the Rembrandt Prize of the Goethe Foundation in Salzburg.Dix died on 25 July 1969 after a second stroke inSingen am Hohentwiel. He is buried atHemmenhofen on Lake Constance.