A graphic artist, avant-garde painter, and biting satirist, German artist Otto Dix survived two world wars. He dabbled in Expressionism, joined the New Objectivity movement, and created his own unique style.
Contemporaries appreciated his grotesque portraits. In the 1920s, journalists, doctors, lawyers, poets, and even artists commissioned his work. He was known for his precision and insight. The second important motif of his work is the plots about the human condition, moral and physical experiences. In his paintings one can feel the pain of cripples who survived the war, the storm of emotions of murderers and sadists, the illness, debauchery and shamelessness of sailors and "night butterflies". His works hover on the edge of the acceptable, the permissible, and evoke a sense of shock, fear, and a desire to hide. He conveyed the reality of the time, the abundance of people with crippled souls and bodies, of which there were many in post-war Germany.
War Cripples
Some of the author's iconic paintings include "War", "Self-portrait with a Palette". Quite curious are "Portrait of the lawyer Dr. Fritz Glaser" and "Portrait of the journalist Sylvia von Harlen".
The artist considered himself a realist. While the avant-garde artists were at the peak of their popularity, he was interested in reality, people, landscapes, emotions, which he recorded. Even if there were trenches, the aftermath of explosions, crippled people all around, he considered it his duty to paint exactly this kind of reality.
Parents
The artist lived through the First World War from the first to the last day, although his friends tried to accuse him of indifference to politics. If he wrote, he spoke about the war cynically, without pathos, heroism and triumph. But it was precisely this manner that allowed him to become a German pacifist artist, demonstrating reality without embellishment.
Very soon, his first self-portrait will appear, inspired by the paintings of Albrecht Düren. Studying the Northern Renaissance and its representatives, Dix was looking for his own style in painting and the frightening realism that would distinguish his canvases.
Self-portrait
At the beginning of World War I, many creative people had volunteered to go to the front, inspired by the idea of change. There were also those who simply succumbed to the spirit of patriotism. Dix was neither the former nor the latter. He fought because war had become a reality of his time. As a realist, he believed it was necessary to experience those emotions personally and to see the horrors of war with his own eyes. His countrymen were looking for heroic deeds, and the artist himself was learning what dirt, hunger, and pain were.During the 4 years of the war, Dix fought in France, Flanders, and Belarus. He saw with his own eyes the most terrible battle on the Somme, when the first tanks were used. In the days between battles, he painted. His relatives sent him materials and food, and they received canvases in return. Returning to the rear, he frightened his loved ones with stories of how he used the guns with a sense of pleasure, destroying the enemy. In 300 letters to his own girlfriend, he described the hunger, dirt, bullets, and endless victims of the war. True, these letters were written in the utopian language of Esperanto, not German.
Chaos on the street
After being wounded in the head and neck, Dix spent a lot of time in the hospital.
Having gone through the entire war, first almost to the end, the artist returned physically whole, but not morally. He would hide his own mental pain under a mask of cynicism. The desire to write was his best medicine.
1920s. Dix learned what happiness and resounding success meant. The Karl Nerendorf Gallery decided to sign a contract with the artist, and he became a professor at the Dresden Art Academy. Add to this the participation in the Berlin exhibitions of the Dada Club, the invitation to the Prussian Academy, the opportunity to be part of the “New Matter”. Not related to bohemian society, who did not know what wealth is, the artist was given the opportunity to travel all over Germany. He was considered a talented portraitist, whose artwork was willingly commissioned.
Portrait of journalist Sylvia von Harden
The furious rate of inflation was taking its toll. At times the fees were depreciated before the artwork was finished. There were also blunders when the Cologne Museum rejected artwork that had already been painted and then wanted to buy it back again. Some of the artist's paintings were so scandalous that he was sued. He is accused of vulgarity, but the hype around the name only increased the popularity of Dix.
Sailor
A complex, not very pleasant artist changed when he met his chosen one. He was not even embarrassed by the fact that she was married. Martha Koch quickly got a divorce from her husband, who had long had feelings for her sister. Their children will stay with her ex-husband, who will also become Dix's friend. The Kochs and Dixes have now become practically one big family. When going to a customer in another city, the artist writes tender letters to his wife. Very soon the couple had three children together, who will often appear in Dix's portraits.
Having experienced love, creative freedom and demand, having achieved recognition, the artist regularly exhibits his works at personal exhibitions in Germany and the USA. Financial well-being allowed him to feel more confident. And yet he thinks about the war, the mortality of living beings and people. Canvases, military engravings, a premonition of a new catastrophe weighed on Dix, while the patriotic impulses of his compatriots prevented them from seeing the real essence of the Reich.
Secular ladies and a beggar. (Metropolis triptych)
With the Nazis coming to power, Dix began to experience difficult times. He lost his professorship and was forbidden to paint in the grotesque manner he preferred. Dix was placed on a list of the country's most dangerous artists, and he learned what it was like to be searched and have his work destroyed. For the safety of his children and wife, he left Dresden and moved his family to a village near Switzerland. Here the artist painted a series of landscapes. In one of the paintings, he depicts Hitler as a child who is offended, conveying the idea of one of the most dangerous sins - envy.
Seven Deadly Sins.
By 1934, the clouds began to thicken even more, and the artist's works began to be removed from museums. Some of his paintings were completely destroyed. Dix no longer wanted to see the war, but in 1945 he was drafted into the army, despite his age (he was already 54). Very soon he would be taken prisoner and would be released only a year after the Victory.
Post-war Germany was divided into two parts. While abstractionists were gaining fashion in the Western part, the value system was changing in the East, propaganda and restrictions were growing stronger. Despite the title of honorary member of several art academies and regular exhibitions, Dix could not find himself in the changed Germany. Time would pass, the artist would celebrate his 60th birthday, and he would be appreciated again. Critics would publish two books about his work, connoisseurs and museums would be ready to pay huge fees for his works.
Girl
Even in moments of difficulties, doubts, restrictions, he did not leave his country. Probably also because he could not take all his close and dear people with him.
Having chosen the FRG as his permanent residence with his family, Dix could only enter the GDR on his own. The money paid in the GDR could not be used in the FRG. He also had many things that kept him in Dresden. After all, he had a second family there...
Kate Koenig was not a lover in the traditional sense. Dix had a relationship with her for 30 years and became the father of her daughter. To support his "second wife" and daughter, the artist created a system of communication through friends. For many years, Dix's legal wife did not even suspect that her husband had a second family, and only learned of her rival a few months before Dix's death.
Dix lived for 78 years. Even as a young man, after studying the works of the Dresden Gallery, he did not consider his own life difficult and understood that wars, thirst for power, envy, violence, and lust have always controlled mortal man. He tried to convey all this to people on his canvases.
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