DIX, Otto, Featured Paintings in Detail

DIX, Otto
Featured Paintings in Detail

DIX, Otto
Street of Prague (Pragerstrasse)
1920
Oil on canvas, 101 x 81 cm
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart

DIX, Otto
(detail)
1920

DIX, Otto
Der Krieg (The War) The Dresden
Triptych
1929-32
Oil and tempera on wood
Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden

DIX, Otto
Der Krieg (The War) The Dresden
Triptych (detail)
1929-32
Oil and tempera on wood
Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden

DIX, Otto
Farewell To Hamburg (Abschied
von Hamburg)
1921
Private collection

DIX, Otto
Farewell To Hamburg (Abschied
von Hamburg) (detail)
1921
Private collection

DIX, Otto
The Salon
1921
Oil on canvas, 86 x 120.5 cm
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart)

DIX, Otto
The Salon (detail)
1921
Oil on canvas, 86 x 120.5 cm
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart)

DIX, Otto
Metropolis, (Großstadt)
1927-1928
Wood, distemper, 181x 404 cm

DIX, Otto
Metropolis, (Großstadt) (detail)
1927-1928
Wood, distemper, 181x 404 cm

DIX, Otto
The Match Seller
1921
Oil on canvas and collage, 44 x 166
cm
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart

DIX, Otto
The Match Seller (detail)
1921
Oil on canvas and collage, 44 x 166
cm
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart

DIX, Otto
Self-Portrait with Muse
1924
Osthaus Museum, Hagen

DIX, Otto
Self-Portrait with Muse (detail)
1924
Osthaus Museum, Hagen

DIX, Otto
Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber
1925
Oil and tempera on plywood, 120
cm x 65 cm

DIX, Otto
(detail)
1925
Oil and tempera on plywood, 120
cm x 65 cm

DIX, Otto
Portrait of the Journalist Sulvia von
Harden
1926
Oil and tempera on wood, 120 x 88
cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée National
d'Art, Paris

DIX, Otto
Portrait of the Journalist Sulvia von
Harden (detail)
1926
Oil and tempera on wood, 120 x 88
cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée National
d'Art, Paris

DIX, Otto
The Skat Players (Card Playing War
Invalids)
1920
Oil and collage on canvas, 110 x 87
cm
Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen,
Berlin

DIX, Otto
The Skat Players (Card Playing War
Invalids) (detail)
1920
Oil and collage on canvas, 110 x 87
cm
Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen,
Berlin

DIX, Otto
Seven Deadly Sins
1933
Oil and egg tempera on wood
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

DIX, Otto
Seven Deadly Sins (detail)
1933
Oil and egg tempera on wood
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

DIX, Otto, Featured Paintings in Detail
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DIX, Otto
Seven Deadly Sins
When Nazis seized power in 1933, like many others, Dix was listed as a degenerate artist and many of his works were burned. He was also forced to join the Reich’s Chamber for
Fine Arts, promising that he will only paint inoffensive landscapes. He did not.
In this period, Dix produced canvases that disguised critics to the Nazi ideals . The seven deadly sins is one of them. Here, the artist uses a medieval allegory to portrait the seven
deadly sins of the Catholic tradition with the magic-realist style typical of the New Objectivity.
In the foreground, Envy, symbolized by a child wearing a mask, rides Greed, who takes the form of an old woman holding a bag of money. As you can imagine, the characteristic
mustache of the Führer on the mask of the child was added after the war, when there was no danger of retaliation.
Behind them appears Sloth, a person dressed as a skeleton with the heart removed, representing Death. The position of the members of this figure resembles the swastika. With this
symbol, Dix criticized German society that allowed the rise of Hitler to power with its silence and conformity. Behind and to the left we see Lust, dancing and trying to breast-feed
Death.
To its right, Wrath is shown as a horned demon. Behind the scythe, we see the head of Pride, which has an anus for mouth. And finally, Gluttony, on the far right corner of the
painting, is symbolized by a figure with a pot on his head that holds two symbols: in its right hand, the symbol of infinity and, in his left, a rod with the symbol of the Christian fish.

DIX, Otto
The Street of Prague (Pragertraße) is the principal artery of Dresden, city of the East of Germany, on the river Elbe, capital of Saxony, near the border with the Czech Republic. Otto Dix
lived a long time in Dresden where he was professor with the Academy until 1933. As from 1920, Otto Dix takes part in the exposures of the Secession of Dresden, and adheres to the
Dada group. It uses reasons and violent colors.
In its paintings and its joinings. It describes contemporary social reality and the consequences of the WW I, especially the loss of dignity of the men wounded with the face like here,
and also in the The Merchant of Matches in 1920.
The central figure of this crippled man is terrible. Otto Dix took part in the war of 1914-1918 . It represented much in its works (Triptych of the War). It feels what felt of the million
humans beings, during the war the man becomes a toy, a puppet and it is precisely what this war veteran in the center evokes a dislocated puppet.
But the artist goes the hand further from a passer by in the foreground is also illustrated as being in of wood. The little girl in front of the window resembles a headstock. In the window
of the wigs of the prostheses the man lost his human dimension in front of the war it remains an object.
He is denied and it any more but does not remain to him to show and denounce.
It is what the artist does as the corpse hung with the tree did it which pointed finger carnage in the Triptych of War. In the newspaper he is written: "Jews, out!".
Dix perceives already in the anti-semitism, the future skids, the rancour and the hatred which will lead to the Segond World War.
Dix did not have a chance with the war it took part in both. And the town of Dresden either. in February 1945, the bombs released by 800 allied bombers make 35.000 death and
destroyed 80% of the city.

DIX, Otto
Der Krieg (The War) The Dresden Triptych
The monumental triptych “The War” ("Der Krieg") held by the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden is one of the most eminent works of 20th-century German Realist painting. Otto Dix
explored the theme of the First World War with an intensity paralleled by few other artists; his uncompromising depictions of wounded and dead soldiers have been etched into the
collective visual memory.
Dix painted the triptych between 1929 and 1932, using it to reflect his experience of the conflict. During this time he constantly modified the composition and hence also the statement
made by the work, whose form is reminiscent of an altarpiece.
In the style of an Old Master, the four panels reveal the First World War, showing troops setting off at daybreak (left panel), the battlefield as a place of death (central panel), soldiers
returning from the hell of battle (right panel) and fallen soldiers resting in peace in a dugout (predella).

DIX, Otto
Farewell To Hamburg (Abschied von Hamburg)
In the summer of 1921, Otto Dix visited the port city of Hamburg on the North Sea. As he walked along the waterfront, he saw sailors on leave as they searched for pleasure on land.
Along the red light district, Dix found brothels and prostitutes in abundance. It was a scene that may have helped reinforce earlier prejudices.
During the war, Dix often held sailors in contempt. The High Seas Fleet was in harbor for much of the conflict. From the artist's perspective, its sailors were chasing prostitutes and
drinking gratuitous amounts of alcohol while the Wehrmacht bore the brunt the war's burden.
Dix's interpretation of a sailor's life as a string of exotic encounters has been described by Ashley Bassie in Expressionism as "intentionally kitch." A sailor's longings last as long as
the time between ports of call.

DIX, Otto
Portrait of the Journalist Sulvia von Harden
As a character of her time just as the woman herself, this image of Sylvia von Harden became iconic of the era. This portrait is perhaps Dix's most recognized. It was even
referenced in the 1972 film Cabaret, set in Weimar-era Berlin.
It is said that Dix painted this portrait after seeing von Harden in the street and exclaiming, "I must paint you, I simply must! You represent an entire epoch." She was amused.
"So you want to paint my lackluster eyes, my ornate ears, my long nose, my thin lips. You want to paint my short legs, my big feet -- things that can only frighten people and
delight no one?" Dix claimed that she was a perfect image for a society that was less concerned about a woman's outward appearance than her psychological state.

DIX, Otto
The Salon
Berlin, 1921. World War I is over, and the Weimar Republic reigns.
Germany is defeated, and her economy crippled by the vengeful victors. Money isn’t worth the paper on which it is printed.
The young are infected with an apocalyptic sense of nihilism, and chase hedonistic delights as they flirt with impending extinction. Many believe they are living in the end times,
and in a way they are right…within the next 25 years the baroque metropolises of Germany will be incinerated, and over 10% of the population, as many as 9 million German
people, will be dead.
Two cultural phenomena emerge out of this cesspool of despair: Nazism and the Cabaret. The latter is the glittering underbelly of Berlin society, like a layer of greasepaint and
rhinestones caked over a dying pig. Here, every imaginable vice is available. Queer sexuality, alcoholism, drug addiction and promiscuity are celebrated. These are the very same
people the Nazis hope to sterilize. Indeed, the German people are seduced by Hitler’s promise of a return to the comforts of bourgeois morality, and Nazi mass hysteria will spell
the end of the Golden age of the Cabaret.
But for now, the good times are in full swing…for those who can afford them. For the lucky, the pretty and the talented, the Cabaret life is one of seamy glamour. A few, like
Marlene Dietrich, become underground superstars. The working ladies of Otto Dix’s Salon are not the lucky ones. Life out of the spotlight is one of depraved prostitution. One can
only imagine the twisted roads that brought them to this back booth where they await their clients.
The two in front appear to be senior members of the group, veterans worn down by years on the mattress. The girl in the middle seems the choicest specimen, a vampy “new
woman” imitating the dark hair and eyeliner of screen star Theda Bara. The girl in back also seems fresh…perhaps a downtrodden housewife trying to feed her family, or an
impoverished war widow.
They are tragic, grotesque, beaten down by life and experience. Yet Dix paints them with exceptional character. There is an air of good humor and camaraderie between them that
is very human. Dix, who was noted for painting satirical portraits of Germany’s intellectual elite, seems to share a warmer rapport with these used-up floozies than with those
luxuriating celebrities. Life was no cabaret for these four friends, and Dix appreciated them for their hardships.

DIX, Otto
Metropolis, (Großstadt)
In he center panel of Metropolis, Dix portrays the upper class of people in the Weimar Republic. In the foreground, we see a woman in a long, ornate dress. She is wearing a lot of
jewelry, which makes it obvious that she is wealthy. There is a band playing in the room and we can see a couple dancing. All of the figures in this section of the triptych seem to be
beautiful, carefree, and appear to be having a splendid time. By their actions, it is assumed that these people do not care at all about any other people than themselves.This center
scene contrasts greatly with the left and right sides of the triptych.
On the left and right hand portions of the triptych, Dix has painted two scenes of crippled war veterans and prostitutes. Even though both the scenes that Dix paints have the same
subjects, there are obvious differences. In the right hand portion of the painting, Dix has painted high-class prostitutes. Dix brings this to the attention of his audience in a few
different ways. The first is the way these prostitutes are dressed in a more similar fashion to the people in the center portion of the triptych than the prostitutes on the left hand
portion. The material that their clothes are made of appears to be more expensive than the material used in the clothing of the prostitutes on the left hand side. The clothing of the
women in the right hand panel displays female sexuality. The red dress and scarf of the woman in the foreground resembles the female vagina. Even the soldier on the right hand
part of the painting looks more well to do than the soldiers on the left. He is sitting up saluting the prostitutes as they walk by him.
Low class prostitutes occupy the left hand portion of the painting. The background that Dix has painted these women on is dark and dreary. The cobblestone that they are walking on
appears worn and cheap. The women are also painted under a bridge. The dog in the foreground of this portion appears to be upset and ready to attack the cripple who is attempting
to move around on cheap prosthetic legs. The look on the standing cripples face is of pure lust. The other veteran in this painting is lying on the ground appearing to look up the
skirt of the prostitutes that is walking by. By Dix painting the men in this manner, he is reducing these prostitutes and these men to the carnal beings that they are. The prostitutes in
this portion of the triptych are dressed in clothing made of cheap material. The women have disgusted looks on their faces and appear more worn down than the prostitutes on the
right hand portion of the painting. Though the group of prostitutes on the left side of the painting appears to be worse off than the ones on the right, both of these groups of women
are corrupt and none of the women in either of these groups are considered respected members of society.

DIX, Otto
Raised by a grandmother in Dresden, she fled to Berlin at age 16 where she supported herself in caberets. By the end of the war, she was dancing nude and performing in films.
She was notorious and always in the company of lovers of both sexes. She could often be seen in hotel lobbies naked apart from an sable wrap, a pet monkey and a silver brooch
packed with cocaine. She died of tuberculosis in 1928.
Dix’s 1925 Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber gives a clue to how he saw the people of the Weimar era in Germany between the wars as the embodiment of the opulence and the
decadence of the time. The garish red of the dress hugging the dancer’s form bleeds with the intensity of the period, which throbbed with the aftershocks of the Great War that
scarred both Germany and Dix himself, who served on the front lines.

DIX, Otto
The Match Seller
A blind, quadruple amputee (a German WWI veteran) with a face almost the size of his body sits forlornly on a well-kept city pavement. He wears dark glasses and his field cap
but no medals or other insignia. His empty sleeves are folded on his threadbare jacket and a wooden tray of matchboxes hangs by tape from his neck. The tray rests on his leg
stumps, which are strapped into short wooden peg prostheses. He wears a grimy ‘granddad’ shirt prudently buttoned up to observe social ‘niceties’. His unshaven face
features a walrus moustache overhanging an almost edentulous, caries-ridden mouth, which emits the cry ‘Streichhölzer, Echte Schwedenhölzer’ (‘Matches, genuine Swedish
matches’), scratched in chalky oil paint on the canvas. Behind his head a wooden door tellingly makes the sign of the cross.
Fashionable, wealthy (‘well heeled’), long-legged, passers-by hurry away to escape embarrassment whilst down at street level a short-legged dachshund (German public) turns
his back and with wide-eyed enjoyment urinates on the veteran’s left stump. Despite the few crumpled banknotes in the soldier’s tray, the gutter is ominously close.
This hapless private, like Brueghel’s Cripples, is poor, isolated, helpless and vulnerable—a dehumanized outcast created by the machinery of war and abandoned by the
technology of peace. The Match Seller, an oil and collage composition, is one of four ‘pictures of cripples’
Otto Dix completed in Dresden as a protest against the senseless brutality of war and the total lack of respect for returning wounded soldiers. The Germany he depicted was
economically and socially broken—demoralized, resentful and violent.

DIX, Otto
Self-Portrait with Muse
Here the fully clothed, thin-lipped, stern-faced fair-haired male artist encounters an almost comically over-endowed, flamboyantly ethnic — whether Semitic or Latin — woman. He
confronts her, he is confronted by her, as she raises her hand in a gesture which can be read as a greeting, a blessing, or a stoppage, a counter-action to the reach of his brush
which is in effect creating her. She is hardly the passive creation of a Pygmalion and if you look at some of the depictions of women by fascist-approved artists of the same general
period in Germany you immediately get what makes this painting so different and seditious even though it does portray a naked woman and a clothed man, a familiar theme in the
history of Western representation.
Dix’s wild muse has an over-ripeness of sensuality and an extreme quality as a representation that more than equals his own and a specificity that makes it hard to think of her as an
abject victim of the male gaze.
Their meeting ground is the blank space of the painting surface itself, the lack of situational specifics giving this a mythological implication and, formally, a modernist undertone
with a medieval subtext: this is a very flat painting yet closer in its spirit and its use of space to the flatness of Northern Renaissance painting, which is one of the main sources of
Dix’s several painterly and graphic styles.

DIX, Otto
The Skat Players (Card Playing War Invalids)
Otto Dix’s painting Skat Players is a prime example of the style of New Objectivity because he criticizes the post World War I state of Germany with vivid imagery while abandoning the
expressionistic qualities found in German art prior to this movement.
The painting portrays three wounded World War One veterans playing cards on a table outside. The soldiers are extremely disfigured and have many implements used to help the
disabled during this period. The tube protruding from the right ear of the man on the left was a device that was used to aid the hearing impaired in these days.The soldier on the left is
also using his one remaining leg to hold up his hand of cards since he has no arms. Two of the soldiers are fitted with prosthetic jaws. The soldier on the right-hand side has a
prosthetic jaw upon which Otto Dix inscribed, “lower jaw prosthesis brand Dix,” along with a picture of a man that may have been Dix himself.
Wounded and disfigured soldiers were a common sight on the streets of post war Germany. The soldier on the right-hand side of the painting is wearing a jacket that was made out of
the thick woven paper that was used by Germans for clothing after the war due to the shortage of supplies available in Germany.
The main focal point and subjects of this painting is the three soldiers. While all the other objects in the painting seem to be simply painted without Dix having paid very much attention
to detail, such as the chairs that the men are sitting on and the table, Dix seems to have spent a great deal of time and focus on the faces of the three soldiers. The soldier’s faces are
painted in great detail and contain many shadows and disfigurements. Their bodies are contorted into very strange and seemingly uncomfortable positions that do not seem natural at
all. All three of these men are missing hair on their heads. The left side of the middle soldiers moustache is full and bushy while the right side contains only a few scraggly hairs. The
lack of hair on the faces and heads of these men could have possibly been burnt off in the war and may no longer be able to grow because of the injuries that they sustained.
By painting Skat Players, Dix was portraying his feelings about the state of Germany in the period directly following World War I. He portrayed the fate of many war veterans and
showed how their lives were changed by the war. The symbolism in his painting reflects the sordid state of affairs in Germany and the painting is an example of New Objectivity.

DIX, Wilhelm Heinrich Otto
In December 1891 Otto Dix was born into the Generation of 1914. He was one of millions of late 19th Century babies who ushered in the 20th on
the battlefields of the First World War.
By 1910 Dix left home for Dresden. He had been accepted into the Saxon School of Arts and Crafts. Here he encountered influences that would
greatly shape his work.
Like many Expressionists, Dix was moved by the Naturalist and Symbolist tendencies of the printmaker Max Klinger. He was first exposed the
artist in Dresden. Nietzsche was popular then and Dix devoured his work. He would later claim his most important sources of inspiration were
the Bible, Goethe, and Nietzsche.
Modern memory holds that the First World War was greeted with joy in the capitols of Europe. Perhaps, but a strange elation did drive many
young men to the colors. Dix was twenty-two in the summer the arch duke died. When war was declared in August of 1914, he immediately
volunteered. Most thought the war would be over by Christmas and worried they’d never get to the front. The stalemate lasted four long years.
Dix was originally assigned to an artillery unit in Dresden. In 1915, he was transferred as a NCO to a machine gun unit. Entrenched automatic
rifles helped create the stalemate in Europe. Machine gunners sprayed bullets at advancing troops and they were very hard to take out. Dix
helped defend the line against the great British advance on the Somme. Siegfried Sassoon, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein were on the other
side.
Dix was wounded several times along the Western Front. In August 1918, he served in Flanders where he took a nearly fatal wound to the neck.
A medic was able to stop the bleeding and he was moved back to an aid station. The war ended with Dix in a hospital bed. He was discharged in
September 1918.
In 1926, Dix became a professor in the Kunstakademie in Dresden. He maintained that position until the Nazis rose to power in 1933. Modern art
ran anathema to Adolf Hitler’s conservative sensibilities. Dix drew special ire as a prominent voice in the anti-war movement. He was stripped of
his professorship and his paintings were displayed in the Degenerate Art Museum in Munich. They were later destroyed.
In Nazi Germany, the countryside offered some respite from state oppression. After he was stripped of his professorship the Dix family moved
to the shores of Lake Constance where he painted mostly inoffensive landscapes. He refused to emigrate since his paintings could not make
the trip abroad. Surely, they would have been destroyed.
In the latter stages of the Second World War Dix was conscripted into the Volkssturm. This was a national militia comprised of young boys and
old men. He was captured by French troops as the Reich collapsed. He spent the duration in a French P.O.W. camp.
Dix continued to work until his death in 1969.

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