Otto Dix was born in Untermhaus, Germany, now a part of the city of Gera, Thuringia. The eldest son of Franz Dix, an iron foundry worker, and Louise, a seamstress[3] who had written poetry in her youth, he was exposed to art from an early age.[4] The hours he spent in the studio of his cousin, Fritz Amann, who was a painter, were decisive in forming young Otto's ambition to be an artist; he received additional encouragement from his primary school teacher.[4] Between 1906 and 1910, he served an apprenticeship with painter Carl Senff, and began painting his first landscapes. In 1910, he entered the Kunstgewerbeschule in Dresden, now the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where Richard Guhr was among his teachers. At that time the school was not a school for the fine arts but rather an academy that concentrated on applied arts and crafts.[5]
The majority of Dix's early works concentrated on landscapes and portraits which were done in a stylized realism that later shifted to expressionism.[6]
World War I service
Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas, etching and aquatint by Otto Dix, 1924
When the First World War erupted, Dix volunteered for the German Army. He was assigned to a field artillery regiment in Dresden.[7] In the autumn of 1915 he was assigned as a non-commissioned officer of a machine-gun unit on the Western front and took part in the Battle of the Somme. In November 1917, his unit was transferred to the Eastern front until the end of hostilities with Russia, and in February 1918 he was stationed in Flanders. Back on the western front, he fought in the German spring offensive. He earned the Iron Cross, 2nd class, and reached the rank of vizefeldwebel. In August of that year he was wounded in the neck, and shortly after he took pilot training lessons.
He took part in an anti-aircraft course in Tongern, was promoted to Vizefeldwebel and after passing the medical tests transferred to Aviation Replacement Unit Schneidemühl in Posen. He was discharged from service on 22 December 1918 and was home for Christmas.[8]
Dix was profoundly affected by the sights of the war, and later described a recurring nightmare in which he crawled through destroyed houses. He represented his traumatic experiences in many subsequent works, including a portfolio of fifty etchings called Der Krieg, published in 1924.[9] Subsequently, he referred again to the war in The War Triptych, painted from 1929 to 1932.
Post-war artwork
At the end of 1918 Dix returned to Gera, but the next year he moved to Dresden, where he studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste. He became a founder of the Dresden Secession group in 1919, during a period when his work was passing through an expressionist phase.[10] In 1920, he met George Grosz and, influenced by Dada, began incorporating collage elements into his works, some of which he exhibited in the first Dada Fair in Berlin. He also participated in the German Expressionists exhibition in Darmstadt that year.[7]
He met metalsmith Martha Koch in 1921, and they married in 1923. They had three children together. She was a frequent subject of his portraits.[11]
In 1924, he joined the Berlin Secession; by this time he was developing an increasingly realistic style of painting that used thin glazes of oil paint over a tempera underpainting, in the manner of the old masters.[12] His 1923 painting The Trench, which depicted dismembered and decomposed bodies of soldiers after a battle, caused such a furor that the Wallraf-Richartz Museum hid the painting behind a curtain. In 1925 the then-mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, canceled the purchase of the painting and forced the director of the museum to resign.
Dix was a contributor to the Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition in Mannheim in 1925, which featured works by George Grosz, Max Beckmann, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Karl Hubbuch, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz and many others. Dix's work, like that of Grosz—his friend and fellow veteran—was extremely critical of contemporary German society and often dwelled on the act of Lustmord, or sexualized murder. He drew attention to the bleaker side of life, unsparingly depicting prostitution, violence, old age, and death.
In one of his few statements, published in 1927, Dix declared, "The object is primary and the form is shaped by the object."[13]
Among his most famous paintings are Sailor and Girl (1925), used as the cover of Philip Roth's 1995 novel Sabbath's Theater, the triptychMetropolis (1928), a scornful portrayal of depraved actions of Germany's Weimar Republic, where nonstop revelry was a way to deal with the wartime defeat and financial catastrophe,[14] and the startling Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926). His depictions of legless and disfigured veterans—a common sight on Berlin's streets in the 1920s—unveil the ugly side of war and illustrate their forgotten status within contemporary German society, a concept also developed in Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.
Although frequently recognized as a painter, Dix drew self-portraits and portraits of others using the medium of silverpoint on prepared paper. "Old Woman," drawn in 1932, was exhibited with old-master drawings.[15]
World War II and the Nazis
When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they regarded Dix as a degenerate artist and had him sacked from his post as an art teacher at the Dresden Academy. He later moved to Lake Constance in the southwest of Germany. Dix's paintings The Trench and War Cripples were exhibited in the state-sponsored Munich 1937 exhibition of degenerate art, Entartete Kunst. War Cripples was later burned.[16]The Trench was long thought to have been destroyed too, but there are indications the work survived until at least 1940. Its later whereabouts are unknown; it may have been looted during the confusion at the end of the war. It has been called 'perhaps the most famous picture in post-war Europe ... a masterpiece of unspeakable horror.[17]
Dix, like all other practising artists, was forced to join the Nazi government's Reich Chamber of Fine Arts (Reichskammer der bildenden Kuenste), a subdivision of Goebbels' Cultural Ministry (Reichskulturkammer). Membership was mandatory for all artists in the Reich. Dix had to promise to paint only inoffensive landscapes. He still painted an occasional allegorical painting that criticized Nazi ideals.[18] His paintings that were considered "degenerate" were discovered among the 1500+ paintings hidden away by the son of Hitler's looted art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt in 2012.[19][20][21]
In 1939 he was arrested on the trumped-up charge of being involved in a plot against Hitler (see Georg Elser), but was later released.
During World War II, Dix was conscripted into the Volkssturm. He was captured by French troops at the end of the war and released in February 1946.
Later life and death
20 Euro coin minted in 2016 to commemorate Dix's 125th birthday
Dix 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 (Großes Verdienstkreuz) and in 1950, he was unsuccessfully nominated for the National Prize of the GDR. He received the Lichtwark Prize in 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.
The Otto-Dix-Haus was opened in 1991, at the 100th anniversary of Dix's birth, in the 18th-century house where he was born and grew up, at Mohrenplatz 4 in the city of Gera, as a museum and art gallery. It is managed by the city administration.
As well as providing access to the rooms Dix lived in, it houses a permanent collection of 400 of his works on paper and paintings. Visitors can see examples of his childhood sketch books, watercolours and drawings from the 1920s and 1930s, and lithographs. The collection also includes 48 postcards he sent from the front during World War I.[22] The gallery also regularly hosts temporary exhibitions.
The building was affected by a flood in June 2013. In order to repair the underlying damage, the museum was closed in January 2016, and re-opened in December 2016 following restoration.[23]
The Museum Haus Dix was inaugurated in 2013 in the house where the artist lived with his family and where he worked from 1936 to 1969, in Hemmenhofen, south Germany.[24]
George Grosz was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity groups during the Weimar Republic. He immigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. Abandoning the style and subject matter of his earlier work, he exhibited regularly and taught for many years at the Art Students League of New York. In 1959 he returned to Berlin, where he died shortly afterwards.
The New Objectivity was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, who used it as the title of an art exhibition staged in 1925 to showcase artists who were working in a post-expressionist spirit. As these artists—who included Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter and Jeanne Mammen—rejected the self-involvement and romantic longings of the expressionists, Weimar intellectuals in general made a call to arms for public collaboration, engagement, and rejection of romantic idealism.
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, he is considered a pioneer of lyrical abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement. He is the author of a book on art theory entitled Aphorismes de Wols.
Rudolf Schlichter was a German painter, engraver and writer. He was one of the most important representatives of the critical-realistic style of verism within the Neue Sachlichkeit movement. He also wrote some autobiographical books.
Christian Schad was a German painter and photographer. He was associated with the Dada and the New Objectivity movements. Considered as a group, Schad's portraits form an extraordinary record of life in Vienna and Berlin in the years following World War I.
Otto Müller was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement.
Georg Schrimpf was a German painter and graphic artist. Along with Otto Dix, George Grosz and Christian Schad, Schrimpf is broadly acknowledged as a main representative of the art movement Neue Sachlichkeit, which developed, in Weimar Germany, from 1919 to 1933, as an outgrowth of Expressionism. Schrimpf was listed as a producer of Degenerate Art by the German National Socialist government in the 1930s.
Georg Scholz was a German realist painter.
Heinrich Maria Davringhausen was a German painter associated with the New Objectivity.
Gert Heinrich Wollheim was a German expressionist painter later associated with the New Objectivity, who fled nazi Germany and worked in the United States after 1947.
Johanna Ey was a German art dealer during the 1920s. She became known as Mutter Ey for the nurturing support she provided to her artists, who included Max Ernst and Otto Dix.
Hans Grundig was a German painter and graphic artist associated with the New Objectivity movement.
The Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden, Germany, displays around 300 paintings from the 19th century until today, including works from Otto Dix, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. The gallery also exhibits a number of sculptures from the Dresden Sculpture Collection from the same period. The museum's collection grew out of the Old Masters Gallery, for which contemporary works were increasingly purchased after 1843.
Metropolis is a triptych painting by the German artist Otto Dix, executed between 1927 and 1928. The painting depicts three nighttime city scenes from the Weimar Republic. The painting belongs to the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart since it was bought from the artist's estate in 1972.
The Trench, but earlier known as Das Kriegsbild or simply Der Krieg, was an oil painting by the German artist Otto Dix. The large painting was made from 1920 to 1923, one of several anti-war works by Dix in the 1920s inspired by his experience of trench warfare in the First World War.
Pol Cassel, originally Paul Ernst Karl Cassel was a German painter and graphic artist in the "Classical-Modern" style.
Wilhelm Heise was a German painter associated with the New Objectivity.
The Otto-Dix-Haus or Otto Dix House in Gera is a museum located in the birth house of the German painter Otto Dix, at Mohrenplatz 4. The building became an art museum in 1991, with exhibits on two floors. for the celebrations of the 100th birthday of Otto Dix. The museum, with the Orangerie, is part of the Kunstsammlung Gera.
Martha Dix was a German goldsmith and silversmith, as well as the wife of the painter Otto Dix. She was portrayed many times by her husband from 1921 to 1933. A well-known double portrait of the couple appears in the photographer August Sander's portfolio People of the 20th Century (1925).
The Skat Players is an oil and collage on canvas painting executed by Otto Dix in 1920. It depicts invalids of the First World War playing a card game. It has the dimensions of 110 by 88 cm. It is held at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. He also had the later title of Kartenspielende Kriegskrüppel. It was one of the first works of the artist in the style of New Objectivity.
References
Conzelmann, O., Otto Dix (Hannover: Fackelträger-Verlag, 1959).
Hinz, Berthold (1979). Art in the Third Reich, trans. Robert and Rita Kimber. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag. ISBN0-394-41640-6.
Karcher, Eva (1988). Otto Dix 1891–1969: His Life and Works. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. OCLC21265198
Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). New Objectivity. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN3-8228-9650-0.
Schmied, Wieland (1978). Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. ISBN0-7287-0184-7.
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