Otto Dix was born in Untermhaus, Germany, now a part of the city ofGera, 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 firstlandscapes. In 1910, he entered theKunstgewerbeschule inDresden, now theDresden Academy of Fine Arts, whereRichard 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]
Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas, etching andaquatint by Otto Dix, 1924
When theFirst World War erupted, Dix volunteered for the German Army. He was assigned to afield artillery regiment in Dresden.[7] In the autumn of 1915 he was assigned as anon-commissioned officer of a machine-gun unit on the Western front and took part in theBattle 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 theGerman spring offensive. He earned theIron Cross, 2nd class, and reached the rank ofVizefeldwebel. 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 histraumatic experiences in many subsequent works, including a portfolio of fiftyetchings calledDer Krieg, published in 1924.[9] Subsequently, he referred to the war again inThe War Triptych, painted from 1929 to 1932.
He met metalsmithMartha 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 theBerlin Secession; by this time he was developing an increasingly realistic style of painting that used thin glazes of oil paint over atempera underpainting, in the manner of the old masters.[12] His 1923 paintingThe Trench, which depicted dismembered and decomposed bodies of soldiers after a battle, caused such a furor that theWallraf-Richartz Museum hid the painting behind a curtain. In 1925 the then-mayor ofCologne,Konrad Adenauer, canceled the purchase of the painting and forced the director of the museum to resign.
Dix was a contributor to theNeue Sachlichkeit exhibition inMannheim 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 ofLustmord, 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 areSailor and Girl (1925), used as the cover ofPhilip Roth's 1995 novelSabbath's Theater, thetriptychMetropolis (1928), a scornful portrayal of decadence and depravity in Germany's Weimar Republic,[14] where nonstop revelry was a way to deal with the wartime defeat and financial catastrophe,[15] and the startlingPortrait 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 inErich Maria Remarque'sAll Quiet on the Western Front.
Although frequently recognized as a painter, Dix drew self-portraits and portraits of others using the medium ofsilverpoint on prepared paper. "Old Woman," drawn in 1932, was exhibited with old-master drawings.[16]
The Nazi-affiliatedGerman Art Society [de] had defined Dix as one of Germany's most 'degenerate' artists long before the Nazis' takeover of power in January 1933. For example, whenMetropolis was exhibited in Dresden for the first time in 1928, one of the German Art Society's founding members and most prominent writer Bettina Feistel-Rohmeder pilloried both Dix personally and the depiction of German society thatMetropolis offered, in the Society's art bulletin, theDeutsche Kunstkorrespondenz [German Art Correspondence].[17] In April 1933, Richard Müller, who with Feistel-Rohmeder had founded theDeutsche Kunstgesellschaft Dresden, sacked Dix from his post as a professor of painting at theDresden Academy, on a directive from Saxony's Reichskommissar Manfred von Killinger. The reason given was that, through his art, he had committed a 'violation of the moral sensibilities' of the nation.[18] Dix later moved toLake Constance in the southwest of Germany.[19] Dix's paintingsThe Trench andWar Cripples were exhibited in thestate-sponsored Munich 1937 exhibition of degenerate art,Entartete Kunst.[20]The Trench was long thought to have been destroyed, 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.[21]
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.[22] His paintings that were considered "degenerate" were discovered in 2012 among the 1500+ paintingshidden away by the son of Hitler's looted-art dealerHildebrand Gurlitt.[23][24][25]
In 1939 he was arrested on the trumped-up charge of being involved in a plot against Hitler[26] (seeGeorg Elser), but was later released.
During World War II, Dix was conscripted into theVolkssturm.[27] He was captured by French troops at the end of the war and released in February 1946.
Dix eventually returned to Dresden and remained there until 1966. After the war most of his paintings were religiousallegories or depictions of post-war suffering, including his 1948Ecce 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 theGrand Merit Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany (Großes Verdienstkreuz) and in 1950, he was unsuccessfully nominated for theNational Prize of the GDR. He received theLichtwark Prize in Hamburg and theMartin 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 theHans Thoma Prize and in 1968 theRembrandt Prize of theGoethe Foundation in Salzburg.
In 2021 the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern restituted two works by Dix, “Dompteuse” and “Dame in der Loge” to the heirs of the Jewish art collectorsIsmar Littmann and Paul Schaefer.[28] Discovered in the possession of the son of Hitler's art dealer,Hildebrand Gurlitt, they were suspected of having been looted by Nazis.[29][30][31]
TheOtto-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 ofGera, 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.[32] 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.[33]
TheMuseum Haus Dix was inaugurated in 2013 in the house where the artist lived with his family and where he worked from 1936 to 1969, inHemmenhofen, south Germany.[34]
^Christie's."Otto Dix (1891-1969) Familie Glaser--Karton zum Gemälde".christies.com.In 1933, Dix was dismissed from his post as a professor of art at the Dresden Academy of Art and was forced into internal exile at Lake Constance, near the Swiss border, where he was permitted to paint landscapes only.
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