By Paul Dunwell, writing for EasyFrame
© Copyright EasyFrame 2021
(Wilhelm Heinrich) Otto Dix was a German printmaker and painter who brutally portrayed Germany and its belligerent heritage during the period of the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was the name adopted by the German state, so called because its constitution was drawn up at Weimar during the period 1918 to 1933. It ran, therefore, from the end of the First World (or 'Great') War to when Hitler's Nazis rose to power and geared up to start the Second World War.
Dix was considered to be one of the most important 'verists' (or realists), together with the Dadaist George Grosz and Max Beckmann (who rejected the expressionism that had made him famous), in that they painted ugly, sordid and mundane matter instead of the traditional (and often jingoistic) heroism and other subjects from imagination which had traditionally been expected of artists (doubtless feeling that this was the sort of fascination that had got Germany into a whole lot of trouble already).
But Dix's work as a verist also made him one of the most important artists from the broader era of Neue Sachlichkeit (a name which appears to translate directly as 'New Objectivity' though it has many possible interpretations, none of which is ideal though 'New Matter-of-Factness' might be closest).
Dix was born and raised in central Germany, the son of a foundry mould-maker and a seamstress. In his youth he spent a lot of time with his cousin Fritz Amann, a painter, but was encouraged by a mother who loved the arts and by a primary-school teacher. When he was 15 he was apprenticed for 4 years to the landscapist Carl Senff and thus initially became a landscapist though he developed as a portraitist too, then in 1910 went to art school in Dresden where he was taught by sculptor and painter Richard Guhr.
Like many of his contemporaries Dix volunteered to go and fight when the Great War started, initially with the artillery (there is a slight advantage in volunteering for units that fire from a distance behind the front line) though he was then made an NCO and put in charge of a machine-gun unit that was rather nearer the action. He fought on the Western Front, the Eastern Front, and then the Western Front again, won an Iron Cross for bravery, but was wounded in the neck though he was deemed fit enough to train as a pilot. He'd just started to serve as one when the war ended. Yet the nightmares never did. He had what we now know to be PTSD.
After the war Dix returned to Dresden to art-school, started to paint as an expressionist, met and married Martha Koch with whom he had a daughter Nelly as well as sons Ursus and Jan, met George Grosz and founded new art groups both there in Dresden and then in Berlin. The work, for which he was unapologetic, became almost unremittingly bleak, featuring prostitution and violence, death and decay (to be expected of somebody with PTSD). 'The Trench' (see above right), with its mutilated and decaying corpses, was so badly-received that the museum in Cologne which had agreed to buy it first hid it behind a curtain and then the mayor forced the museum-director to resign. Later it was thought to have been burned by the Nazis, as was 'War Cripples' (which some might well describe as a 'satirical caricature') below. But somehow 'The Trench' appears to have survived initially though it may not have done for long. Meanwhile Dix was taken to court in 1925 over two paintings of prostitutes and yet he successfully defended himself on 'indecency' charges. Two years later he became a lecturer.
Fairly predictably, when the Nazis came to power they sacked Dix from his post in Dresden, labelled him as a degenerate artist for 'violation of the moral sensibilities and subversion of the militant spirit of the German people', confiscated around 260 of his pieces and exhibited some of what they didn't burn at Munich's newly-founded 'Degenerate Art Museum' in order to damage his reputation.
Forced to comply with regulations laid down by the propaganda ministry's infamous Joseph Goebbels, Dix sloped off to Lake Constance, ostensibly to paint landscapes that wouldn't offend anybody's sensibilities though true-to-form he appears to have managed to paint some more subversive stuff on the quiet too.
At the outbreak of the war in 1939 Dix was 48 and would generally have been considered too old to serve. But he was perceived as a threat and arrested on what appears to have been a trumped-up charge of plotting against Hitler. Fortunately he was released. Later, as fortunes turned against Germany and it was desperately short of men, he was forced to join the so-called 'Volkssturm', the Nazi equivalent of the British Home Guard (or 'Dad's Army', as it is often known). Thus he found himself captured by the French at the end of the war but thankfully was released unharmed and packed off home.
Dix returned to work in Dresden and then to Lake Constance where he was ultimately to die. By then he had been very much rehabilitated and was seen as a visionary and celebrity in what had by then become East Germany and West Germany, but globally too, and he was to be given numerous award and accolades including (posthumously) appearing on a 20 Euro coin minted in 2016 to celebrate what would have been his 125th birthday.
George Grosz is on record as describing how Dix had started to study old master techniques in the early 1920s. Apparently he'd first draw in a thin egg-based tempera which he then built up as layers before adding various cold and warm tones of oils and mastic (mastic and turps make a varnish).This appears to have been a unique approach.
Dix and other artists within the Neue Sachlichkeit movement, which was geographically disparate in that it had exponents based in several towns within Germany and Switzerland, including George Grosz, Anton Räderscheidt, Rudolf Schlichter, Carl Grossberg, Jeanne Mammen, Wilhelm Lachnit, Hans Grundig, Max Beckmann, Karl Hubbuch, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Heinrich Hoerle and Christian Schad, were renouncing expressionism and embracing a more-businesslike Americanism during an era of extreme austerity that was a consequence of Germany having to pay massive retributions as a penalty for it starting the First World (or 'Great') War. (Of course ultimately the victors realised that those punitive retributions were in part why Hitler was able to rise to power, which is why both Germany and Japan were given an easier ride, and indeed helped to rebuild, after World War Two.)
But it's important to realise that the Neue Sachlichkeit movement was not simply one of painters; it comprised other creatives too, including:
In summary, although Otto Dix wasn't an official war-artist, he reminded people of war - having experienced it at first hand - at a time when they wanted to forget it and the humiliation it involved. Had he, and those like him, been heeded then the Second World War might never have happened.
You can easily and affordably buy unframed prints of his work. Try going to www.ottodix.org/catalog-prints/. Though there are many other sources.
You'll want to frame whatever you buy. Any good framers will be able to show you a vast range of different solutions and advise on what might be the most suitable given the work and its proposed location.
EasyFrame is on 01234 856 501 and / or sales@EasyFrame.co.uk and they'll always chat even if you don't want to buy!
Article Posted: 11/03/2021 06:00:42