He had been accepted into the Saxon School of Arts and Crafts. Here he encountered influences that would greatly shape his work.
College/University
Gallery of Otto Dix
In 1909, Dix began his study at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. There was a huge creative output in the city, with a well-established and internationally renowned art and music scene that hosted large exhibitions and events.
In 1909, Dix began his study at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. There was a huge creative output in the city, with a well-established and internationally renowned art and music scene that hosted large exhibitions and events.
Otto Dix was a German artist known for his grotesque portrait paintings and ghoulish visions of war. A member of the New Objectivity movement along with George Grosz and Max Beckmann, Dix was heavily influenced by his time serving in the hellish trenches of World War I.
Background
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was born to Franz and Pauline Dix on December 2, 1891. His father was a mold maker in an iron foundry, and Dix inherited his strength of character and steel-blue eyes. From his mother, a seamstress, he received a love of music and poetry. He first displayed his artistic talent - especially in drawing - during elementary school. At the age of ten, he modeled for painter Fritz Amann and, impressed by his experience in the studio, decided to become a painter himself.
Education
Otto's school art teacher, Ernst Schunke, guided his study and helped him get financial assistance. The award required that he learn a craft while he continued to study art with Schunke, so he became an apprentice decorator for four years. In 1909, Dix began his study at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. There was a huge creative output in the city, with a well-established and internationally renowned art and music scene that hosted large exhibitions and events. By 1910 his apprenticeship was complete and 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.
Dix did not struggle financially during art school; after the first semester he was exempt from paying fees and received a stipend. He also made extra money selling small portraits and genre paintings as well as coloring photographs. The Academy did not offer academic painting, but a more craft-oriented education. As a result, Dix was essentially a self-taught painter. But he did try sculpting under the guidance of Richard Guhr. A bust of Friedrich Nietzsche he created was purchased for the Dresden State Museum but was later destroyed by the Nazis. After the war, Dix resumed his art education with Max Feldbauer and Otto Gussman at the Dresden Academy of Art (1919 - 1922).
Through his intensive study of the Old Dutch, Italian, and German Masters, Dix taught himself how to paint with their methods - building up layers of paint to create depth and luminescence. However, he was also impressed by the Expressionists and the Post-Impressionists and in particular by a Vincent van Gogh exhibition that he saw in 1913. Primarily painting portraits and landscapes, Dix experimented with pen and ink and made his first prints in 1913.
When WWI began, Dix volunteered, somewhat eagerly, for service, and was drafted into a field artillery regiment; but by 1915 he was a machine gunner at the frontlines in France, and his experience of several horrific battles began to sour his enthusiasm. He was wounded several times but managed to create sketches of many of the tragic scenes he witnessed.
In the aftermath of the war, Dresden was a shadow if its former self. No longer a seat of government, it suffered a huge drop in income and severe rationing. However, the artistic scene adapted and came back full force. With the value of money and political ideas in constant flux, Dix was driven to experiment. He had already taken on some elements of Futurism and Cubism during the war years; now he began integrating Dadaist and Expressionist elements into his work. In 1919, he co-founded the Dresdner Sezession Gruppe and participated in two of their exhibitions at the Galerie Emil Richter. He created surreal portraits and woodcuts, even delving into collage and mixed media.
After 1920, Dix synthesized and transformed these styles into his own brand of realism. Over the next few years, he composed some of his most disturbing canvases of sexual violence, murder, and cruelty. His “Skat Players (Card-Playing War Cripples)” (1920) is an example of this grotesque, yet poignant imagery. In 1921, he participated in exhibitions in Berlin and Dresden before moving to Dusseldorf in 1922. This relocation was an important shift as he studied with new teachers, Heinrich Nauen and Wilhelm Herbeholz, and became a part of both Johanna Ey's art salon circle and the German modernist Das Junge Rheinland group.
Throughout the 1920s Dix was included in many of the most significant exhibitions of new art in Germany. Most importantly, he was included in Neue Sachlichkeit, the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1925 that gave its name to the movement that Dix would forever be associated with. Neue Sachlichkeit evolved out of Expressionism, but took on qualities of the classical, linear realism that was becoming prevalent in Italy and France.
It appeared more sober and realistic than previous styles, though in the hands of artists such as Dix and Grosz, it was no less critical. Some of the artists were called the Verists and could be aggressive and cynical, while others, less abrasive, were described as Magic Realists. Dix was a Verist and, with a critical spirit, he turned his portrait skills on the decadence and debauchery of Weimar society, with works like “Metropolis” (1927 - 1928). Other notable canvases from this period include his triptych “The War” (1929 - 1932).
In 1931, Dix was appointed a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. The same year he showed work in exhibitions all over Germany and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This renown was relatively short-lived, however, as the Nazis began to target him, regarding his art as immoral. As such, he was forbidden to exhibit in Germany, but he traveled to Switzerland several times during the mid-1930s and participated in several exhibitions there.
Forced to join the Nazi government's Reich Chamber of Fine Arts in 1934, Dix still managed to express himself. “Seven Deadly Sins” (1933) parodies Adolf Hitler as the embodiment of Envy. He was sent to a rural outpost and portrayed the surrounding landscapes in his work. In 1939, Dix was arrested on charges of plotting to kill Hitler, but the charges were dropped. He was captured by the French at the end of the war and held prisoner until 1946. Not wasting time, he painted a triptych for the prison camp chapel. After returning to Germany, Dix picked up where the war had interrupted his career. He resumed showing works and began making lithographs and documenting his war experiences and its effects in his work.
Much of Dix's later work focuses on post-war suffering, religious allegories, and Biblical scenes. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, he traveled a great deal and exhibited his work constantly. He was appointed to membership of many art academies in Florence, Berlin, and Dresden. He continued making prints and participated in a short documentary film in 1965. In 1967, after traveling to Greece, he suffered a stroke, which paralyzed his left hand. He died in 1969.
Battle weary troops retreating - Battle of the Somme
The widow
Self-Portrait
Trenches
Pragerstrasse
Portrait of Dr Heinrich Stadelmann
Portrait of the Lawyer Hugo Simons
Ursus, Sitting
The Resurrection
Self-Portrait
The Nun
Wounded Soldier
People in Trummen
Uneven couple
Portrait of Paul F. Schmidt
Leda
Randegg in the snow with ravens
Nocturnal Encounter with a Lunatic
Nude Girl with Gloves
Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia Von Harden
Working Class Boy
Crater field near Dontrien lit up by flares
Dying Warrior
The God of confectioners
Masks as Ruins
Trench Warfare
Portrait of the Lawyer Dr. Fritz Glaser
Dawn
Three Prostitutes on the Street
Self-Portrait
Hugo Erfurth with Dog
Sunrise
The Goodbye to Hamburg
Still Life with Widow's Veil
Girl with Pink Rose
Disintegrating Trench
Mother with Child
Apotheosis
Totentanz anno 17 (Hohe Toter Mann)
Frau Martha Dix
Self-Portrait with Wanderhut
Newborn Baby on Hands
The Family of the Painter Adalbert Trillhaase
Myself in Brussels
Nelly with Toy
Buried alive
Abandoned position near neuville
Lovers
Metropolis
Near Langemarck
Prostitutes
Trench
Vanitas (Youth and Old Age)
The War
Street (Strasse) from the portfolio Nine Woodcuts
Self-Portrait as a Target
Electrical
Scherzo from the portfolio Nine Woodcuts
Family Portrait
Self Portrait with Easel
Artwork
Old Woman
Ursus With Spintop
Dedicated to the Dramatist Frank Wedekind
Reclining Nude
The Skat Players
Wounded man fleeing
Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas
Self-portrait with fur cap
Shock Troops Advance under Gas
To Beauty
The Dancer Anita Berber
Portrait of Poet Ivar von Lücken
Pregnant Woman
Trenches
The Street of Brothels
Small Self-Portrait
Portrait of Heinrich George
Fritz Perls
From the catacombs in Palermo II
Martha Dix
Plague German
Relay Post
Wilhelm Heinrich
Self-Portrait as a prisoner of war
Melancholie
Little Girl
War
Gas Victims
Head of a Man (Self-Portrait)
Cats
Self-Portrait as Mars
Cosi fan tutte
Dead sentry in the trenches
Portrait of the Painter Hans Theo Richter and his wife Gisela
Mother and Eva
The sailor
The celebrities: constellation
Street Noise
Dream of the sadist
Moon Woman
Warrior with a Pipe
Self-portrait with Marcella
Views
Otto Dix was initially drawn to Expressionism and Dada, but like many of his generation in Germany in the 1920s, he was inspired by trends in Italy and France to embrace a cold, linear style of drawing and more realistic imagery. Later, his approach became more fantastic and symbolic, and he began to depict nudes as witches or personifications of melancholy.
Dix always balanced his inclination toward realism with an equal tendency toward the fantastic and the allegorical. For example, his images of prostitutes and injured war veterans serve as emblems of a society damaged both physically and morally. Although Dix's work is often noted for its sharp-eyed depiction of the human figure, his early fixation with crippled veterans and his resort to caricature suggest that he was uncomfortable with celebrating the human body - and the triumphant human spirit - in his paintings.
Quotations:
“Art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time.”
Membership
In 1919, he co-founded the Dresdner Sezession Gruppe. In 1931, Dix was appointed a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. He was appointed to membership of many art academies in Florence, Berlin, and Dresden.
Interests
Bible
Philosophers & Thinkers
Nietzsche
Writers
Goethe
Artists
Vincent van Gogh
Connections
In 1923, Dix married Martha Koch and over the next decade had three children, Nelly and two sons, Ursus and Jan, all of whom were captured on canvas throughout their childhoods.