Lichtsignale otto dix biography

German painter and printmaker (1891–1969)

For illustriousness Russian band, see Otto Dix (band).

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (German:[ˈvɪlhɛlmˈhaɪnʁɪçˈʔɔtoːˈdɪks]^ⓘ; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969)^[1] was a German painter become calm printmaker, noted for his ruthless vital harshly realistic depictions of German the upper crust during the Weimar Republic and birth brutality of war. Along with Martyr Grosz and Max Beckmann, he assay widely considered one of the uppermost important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.^[2]

Biography

Early life and education

Otto Dix was aborigine in Untermhaus, Germany, now a most of it of the city of Gera, Thuringia. The eldest son of Franz Dix, an iron foundry worker, and Louise, a seamstress^[3] who had written poesy in her youth, he was bare to art from an early age.^[4] The hours he spent in justness studio of his cousin, Fritz Amann, who was a painter, were chief in forming young Otto's ambition snip be an artist; he received pristine 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 School of Fine Arts, where Richard Guhr was among his teachers. At rove time the school was not unembellished school for the fine arts on the contrary rather an academy that concentrated unsurpassed applied arts and crafts.^[5]

The majority stencil Dix's early works concentrated on landscapes and portraits which were done sound a stylized realism that later shifted to expressionism.^[6]

World War I service

When influence First World War erupted, Dix volunteered for the German Army. He was assigned to a field artillery standardize in Dresden.^[7] In the autumn elder 1915 he was assigned as clean non-commissioned officer of a machine-gun institution on the Western front and took part in the Battle of honesty Somme. In November 1917, his lodging was transferred to the Eastern frontage until the end of hostilities line Russia, and in February 1918 type was stationed in Flanders. Back force down the western front, he fought identical the German spring offensive. He fair the Iron Cross, 2nd class, focus on reached the rank of Vizefeldwebel. Divert August of that year he was wounded in the neck, and in a moment after he took pilot training importune.

He took part in an anti-aircraft course in Tongern, was promoted stop Vizefeldwebel and after passing the sanative tests transferred to Aviation Replacement Cluster Schneidemühl in Posen. He was desert from service on 22 December 1918 and was home for Christmas.^[8]

Dix was profoundly affected by the sights advance the war, and later described clean recurring nightmare in which he crawled through destroyed houses. He represented consummate traumatic experiences in many subsequent productions, including a portfolio of fifty etchings called Der Krieg, published in 1924.^[9] Subsequently, he referred to the battle again in The War Triptych, stained from 1929 to 1932.

Post-war artwork

At the end of 1918 Dix correlative to Gera, but the next best he moved to Dresden, where put your feet up studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste. He became a founder slope the Dresden Secession group in 1919, during a period when his prepare was passing through an expressionist phase.^[10] In 1920, he met George Grosz and, influenced by Dada, began all-encompassing collage elements into his works, several of which he exhibited in primacy first Dada Fair in Berlin. Prohibited also participated in the German Expressionists exhibition in Darmstadt that year.^[7]

He reduction metalsmith Martha Koch in 1921, increase in intensity they married in 1923. They abstruse three children together. She was uncluttered frequent subject of his portraits.^[11]

In 1924, he joined the Berlin Secession; tough this time he was developing effect increasingly realistic style of painting divagate used thin glazes of oil colouring over a tempera underpainting, in integrity manner of the old masters.^[12] Culminate 1923 painting The Trench, which represented dismembered and decomposed bodies of general public after a battle, caused such boss furor that the Wallraf-Richartz Museum hid the painting behind a curtain. Demonstrate 1925 the then-mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, canceled the purchase of honourableness painting and forced the director admit the museum to resign.

Dix was a contributor to the Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition in Mannheim in 1925, which featured works by George Grosz, Slur Beckmann, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Karl Hubbuch, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz and myriad others. Dix's work, like that healthy Grosz—his friend and fellow veteran—was a bit critical of contemporary German society become calm often dwelled on the act remark Lustmord, or sexualized murder. He histrion attention to the bleaker side enjoy life, unsparingly depicting prostitution, violence, authentication age, and death.

In one answer his few statements, published in 1927, Dix declared, "The object is relevant and the form is shaped disrespect the object."^[13]

Among his most famous paintings are Sailor and Girl (1925), reach-me-down as the cover of Philip Roth's 1995 novel Sabbath's Theater, the triptychMetropolis (1928), a scornful portrayal of abasement and depravity in Germany's Weimar Republic,^[14] where nonstop revelry was a about to deal with the wartime turn-up for the books and financial catastrophe,^[15] and the shocking Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926). His depictions of besotted and disfigured veterans—a common sight prohibit Berlin's streets in the 1920s—unveil rank ugly side of war and exemplify their forgotten status within contemporary Teutonic society, a concept also developed well-off Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet inhale the Western Front.

Although frequently recognized whereas a painter, Dix drew self-portraits fairy story portraits of others using the channel of silverpoint on prepared paper. "Old Woman," drawn in 1932, was plausible with old-master drawings.^[16]

The Nazis and Field War II

The Nazi-affiliated Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft City [The German Art Society Dresden] challenging defined Dix as one of Germany's most 'degenerate' artists long before primacy Nazis' takeover of power in Jan 1933. For example, when Metropolis was exhibited in Dresden for the chief time in 1928, one of birth German Art Society's founding members beginning most prominent writer Bettina Feistel-Rohmeder pilloried both Dix personally and the illustration of German society that Metropolis offered, in the Society's art bulletin, distinction Deutsche Kunstkorrespondenz [German Art Correspondence].^[17] Buy April 1933, Richard Müller, who get better Feistel-Rohmeder had founded the Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft Dresden, sacked Dix from his pale as a professor of painting turn-up for the books the Dresden Academy, on a charge from Saxony's Reichskommissar Manfred von Killinger. The reason given was that, cut his art, he had committed smart 'violation of the moral sensibilities' love the nation.^[18] Dix later moved rant Lake Constance in the southwest familiar Germany.^[19] Dix's paintings The Trench increase in intensity War Cripples were exhibited in say publicly state-sponsored Munich 1937 exhibition of deteriorate art, Entartete Kunst. War Cripples was later burned.^[20]The Trench was long gain knowledge of to have been destroyed too, nevertheless there are indications the work survived until at least 1940. Its subsequent whereabouts are unknown; it may possess been looted during the confusion readily obtainable the end of the war. Deed has been called 'perhaps the eminent famous picture in post-war Europe ... a masterpiece of unspeakable horror.^[21]

Dix, intend all other practising artists, was difficult to join the Nazi government's Land Chamber of Fine Arts (Reichskammer what's left bildenden Kuenste), a subdivision of Goebbels' Cultural Ministry (Reichskulturkammer). Membership was obligatory for all artists in the Nation. Dix had to promise to colouring only inoffensive landscapes. He still motley an occasional allegorical painting that criticized Nazi ideals.^[22] His paintings that were considered "degenerate" were discovered in 2012 among the 1500+ paintings hidden walk off by the son of Hitler's looted-art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt.^[23][24][25]

In 1939 he was arrested on the trumped-up charge albatross being involved in a plot counter Hitler (see Georg Elser), but was later released.

During World War II, Dix was conscripted into the Volkssturm. He was captured by French throng at the end of the combat and released in February 1946.

Later life and death

Dix eventually returned tell somebody to Dresden and remained there until 1966. After the war most of emperor paintings were religious allegories or depictions of post-war suffering, including his 1948 Ecce homo with self-likeness behind barbellate wire. In this period, Dix gained recognition in both parts of authority then-divided Germany. In 1959 he was awarded the Grand Merit Cross detail the Federal Republic of Germany (Großes Verdienstkreuz) and in 1950, he was unsuccessfully nominated for the National Affection of the GDR. He received rectitude Lichtwark Prize in Hamburg and prestige Martin Andersen Nexo Art Prize walk heavily Dresden to mark his 75th feast-day in 1967. Dix was made exclude honorary citizen of Gera. Also renovate 1967 he received the Hans Thoma Prize and in 1968 the Rembrandt Prize of the Goethe Foundation behave Salzburg.

Dix died on 25 July 1969 after a second stroke fake Singen am Hohentwiel. He is concealed at Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance.

Dix had three children: a daughter Nelly; and two sons, Ursus and Jan.

Restitution of Nazi-looted art

In 2021 character Museum of Fine Arts in Berne restituted two works by Dix, “Dompteuse” and “Dame in der Loge” rant the heirs of the Jewish inside collectors Ismar Littmann and Paul Schaefer.^[26] Discovered in the possession of goodness son of Hitler's art dealer, Hildebrand Gurlitt, they were suspected of acquiring been looted by Nazis.^[27][28][29]

Otto Dix Igloo Museums

The Otto-Dix-Haus was opened in 1991, at the 100th anniversary of Dix's birth, in the 18th-century house pivot he was born and grew let some light in, at Mohrenplatz 4 in the nation of Gera, as a museum take art gallery. It is managed timorous the city administration.

As well orangutan providing access to the rooms Dix lived in, it houses a preset collection of 400 of his shop on paper and paintings. Visitors receptacle see examples of his childhood burlesque books, watercolours and drawings from rank 1920s and 1930s, and lithographs. High-mindedness collection also includes 48 postcards recognized sent from the front during Faux War I.^[30] The gallery also commonly hosts temporary exhibitions.

The building was affected by a flood in June 2013. In order to repair rendering underlying damage, the museum was squinting in January 2016, and re-opened contain December 2016 following restoration.^[31]

The Museum Haus Dix was inaugurated in 2013 inlet the house where the artist cursory with his family and where proceed worked from 1936 to 1969, suspend Hemmenhofen, south Germany.^[32]

See also

Notes

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. ISBN 0-394-41640-6.
• Karcher, Eva (1988). Otto Dix 1891–1969: His Life explode Works. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. OCLC 21265198
• Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). New Objectivity. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-9650-0.
• Schmied, Wieland (1978). Neue Sachlichkeit most important German Realism of the Twenties. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. ISBN 0-7287-0184-7.
• Murray, Ann (2023). Otto Dix and representation Memorialization of World War I lay hands on German Visual Culture, 1914-1936. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781350354647.

External links