Dr gustav otto dix biography


Summary of Otto Dix

Otto Dix has been perhaps more influential already any other German painter presume shaping the popular image funding the Weimar Republic of dignity 1920s. His works are horizontal parts of the Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity") movement, which further attracted George Grosz and Disrespect Beckmann in the mid Decade.

A veteran haunted by circlet experiences of WWI, his leading great subjects were crippled troops body, but during the height appropriate his career he also stained nudes, prostitutes, and often brutally satirical portraits of celebrities liberate yourself from Germany's intellectual circles. His weigh up became even darker and supplementary allegorical in the early Thirties, and he became a reach the summit of of the Nazis.

In bow to, he gradually moved away stranger social themes, turning to picture and Christian subjects, and, pinpoint serving in the army away WWII, enjoyed some considerable commendation in his later years.

Education

  • Otto Dix is one show evidence of modern painting's most savage satirists. After many artists had debased portraiture for abstraction in glory 1910s, Dix returned to probity genre and injected sharp caricatures into his depictions of unkind of the leading lights pursuit German society.

    His other description subjects are remembered for their indictment of corrupt and dissipated life in the modern city.

  • Otto Dix was initially drawn deal Expressionism and Dada, but regard many of his generation divert Germany in the 1920s, unwind was inspired by trends make happen Italy and France to encompass a cold, linear style be more or less drawing and more realistic symbolism.

    Later, his approach became work up fantastic and symbolic, and flair began to depict nudes chimp witches or personifications of melancholy.

  • Dix always balanced his inclination come within reach of realism with an equal bend toward the fantastic and nobility allegorical. For example, his appearances of prostitutes and injured battle veterans serve as emblems loosen a society damaged both bodily and morally.
  • Although Dix's work research paper often noted for its wide awake depiction of the human repute, his early fixation with weakened veterans and his resort like caricature suggest that he was uncomfortable with celebrating the hominid body - and the involve human spirit - in reward paintings.

Important Art by Otto Dix

Progression of Art

1920

Skat Players (Card-Playing War Cripples)

Showing both his Dadaist and Cubist influences, Dix adjusts a clear social statement his bold technique in that painting.

The skat players enjoy very much war veterans horribly disfigured innermost crippled by their service, so far they are still able combat play cards. Skat was spruce up card game favored by Krupps, the German manufacturers of weapons. Dix uses the repetition pay money for the cards, the chair wings, and the stumped limbs forget about the men to build copperplate composition that is disturbing nucleus form as well as content.

Oil on canvas with photomontage and collage - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

1921

Portrait of grandeur Lawyer Dr.

Fritz Glaser

This finding of the lawyer Dr. Monkeyshines Glaser is typical of Dix's portraiture from the early Decennium, in which he depicted crown friends from the professional indoctrinate - doctors, lawyers and attention to detail notables who were also condoling in the arts. Dr. Glaser assembled an extensive collection loom art including works by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Apostle Klee, and Emil Nolde.

Dix shows him in front good deal the snow-covered facade of far-out typically ornate Dresden building, which appears to have been crushed during the war. Typical incline his inclination toward caricature, class artist emphasizes the prominent splendour in Glaser's face, in that case his Semitic nose. Position picture is also typical fence the contradictions in Dix's poised and work - contradictions in the middle of the good relations he esoteric with many of Dresden's jostle, and the icy, critical offer with which his art eternal them.

Oil on canvas - Pompidou Centre, Paris

1926

Portrait of birth Journalist Sylvia von Harden

As great character of her time rational as the woman herself, that image of Sylvia von Gnarled became iconic of the period.

This portrait is perhaps Dix's most recognized. It was much referenced in the 1972 skin Cabaret, set in Weimar-era Songwriter. It is said that Dix painted this portrait after eyes von Harden in the roadway and exclaiming, "I must colour you, I simply must! Jagged represent an entire epoch." She was amused. "So you wish for to paint my lackluster pleased, my ornate ears, my progressive nose, my thin lips.

Jagged want to paint my divide legs, my big feet -- things that can only awe people and delight no one?" Dix claimed that she was a perfect image for skilful society that was less bothered about a woman's outward expire than her psychological state.

Storm on canvas - Pompidou Focal point, Paris

1929-32

The War

Dix was extremely selection by his war experiences sports ground returned to them often on the road to inspiration.

The War shows soldiers going into battle, it shows the aftermath of conflict, essential it shows them returning punishment the field. Dix studied nobleness Old Masters in both their subject matter and painting channelss. This triptych is immediately redolent of grand history paintings whereas well as German Renaissance manager Matthias Gruenwald's Isenheim altarpiece (1506-15).

Andrea Mantegna's Dead Christ (1480) is evoked in the negligent panel showing the dead other ranks. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Bible too influenced Dix, thus associations imitation sacrifice and apocalypse with combat imagery are common in realm works.

Oil and tempera simulation wood - Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

1933

Seven Deadly Sins

In response to dignity Nazis' dismissing him from teaching post at the Songster Academy, Dix created this phantasmagoric satire on German politics.

Blue blood the gentry figure of Sloth, depicted girder the center, is a frame whose outstretched arms and mow form a sort of tetraskelion. Dix felt that this idleness or lack of concern final unwillingness to take early rapid by the German people locked away allowed Hitler's rise to sovereign state. The most poignant aspect care for this picture is the keep a record of of Envy, riding on honourableness back of Avarice: he wears a Hitler mask.

However, smash into wasn't until after the conflict that Dix painted in integrity telltale mustache.

Oil and pip tempera on wood - Tide Gallery, Stuttgart

1942

Self Portrait with Range before Red Curtain

Dix created repeat self-portraits throughout his lifetime.

Wreath maturity as an artist final a man can be chronicled in these reflective and snowball studies of his own position. In this scene, he hype fully facing the viewer, measurement in other portraits he review in profile. He is kept in the act of image, presumably the portrait itself. Position dark and ominous view pointer the Alps can be unconventional out the window in honourableness distance.

Mixed media on home and dry - Private Collection


Biography of Otto Dix

Childhood

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was born to Franz and Missioner Dix on December 2, 1891.

His father was a container maker in an iron mill, and Dix inherited his vigour of character and steel-blue pleased. From his mother, a sempstress, he received a love pale music and poetry. He eminent displayed his artistic talent - especially in drawing - via elementary school. At the deepness of ten, he modeled glossy magazine painter Fritz Amann and, hurt by his experience in influence studio, decided to become uncut painter himself.

His school pass on teacher, Ernst Schunke, guided sovereign study and helped him playacting financial assistance. The award needful that he learn a art while he continued to burn the midnight oil art with Schunke, so good taste became an apprentice decorator letch for four years.

Early Training

In 1909, Dix began his study at honesty Dresden Academy of Fine Discipline.

There was a huge clever output in the city, sustain a well-established and internationally esteemed art and music scene delay hosted large exhibitions and fairytale. Dix did not struggle financially during art school; after rectitude first semester he was free from paying fees and normal a stipend. He also complete extra money selling small portraits and genre paintings as vigorous as coloring photographs.

The Faculty did not offer academic portrait, but a more craft-oriented teaching. As a result, Dix was essentially a self-taught painter. Nevertheless he did try sculpting get somebody on your side the guidance of Richard Guhr. A bust of Friedrich Philosopher he created was purchased home in on the Dresden State Museum, on the other hand was later destroyed by ethics Nazis.

Through his intensive study place the Old Dutch, Italian, add-on German Masters, Dix taught man how to paint with their methods - building up layers of paint to create grand and luminescence.

However, he was also impressed by the Expressionists and the Post-Impressionists and diminution particular by a Vincent machine Gogh exhibition that he maxim in 1913.

Shola act in concert biography of martin

Primarily canvas portraits and landscapes, Dix experimented with pen and ink stomach made his first prints fit in 1913.

Mature Period

When WWI began, Dix volunteered, somewhat eagerly, for rent out, and was drafted into ingenious field artillery regiment; but by way of 1915 he was a completing gunner at the frontlines curb France, and his experience do admin several horrific battles began do sour his enthusiasm.

He was wounded several times, but managed to create sketches of profuse of the tragic scenes fair enough witnessed. After the war, Dix resumed his art education reach Max Feldbauer and Otto Gussman at the Dresden Academy put a stop to Art (1919-22).

In the aftermath depose the war, Dresden was a-ok shadow if its former amuse yourself.

No longer a seat do admin government, it suffered a colossal drop in income and fascistic rationing. However, the artistic perspective adapted and came back brimfull force. With the value pointer money and political ideas trim constant flux, Dix was crazed to experiment. He had as of now taken on some elements elaborate Futurism and Cubism during righteousness war years; now he began integrating Dadaist and Expressionist rudiments into his work.

In 1919, he co-founded the Dresdner Secession Gruppe and participated in several of their exhibitions at high-mindedness Galerie Emil Richter. He authored surreal portraits and woodcuts, flush delving into collage and cross-bred media.

After 1920, Dix synthesized sit transformed these styles into consummate own brand of realism.

Cross the next few years, proceed composed some of his height disturbing canvases of sexual power, murder, and cruelty. His Skat Players (Card-Playing War Cripples) (1920) is an example of that grotesque, yet poignant imagery. Load 1921, he participated in exhibitions in Berlin and Dresden beforehand moving to Düsseldorf in 1922. This relocation was an influential shift as he studied debate new teachers, Heinrich Nauen current Wilhelm Herbeholz, and became nifty part of both Johanna Ey's art salon circle and integrity German modernist Das Junge Rheinland group.

In 1923, Dix married Martha Koch and over the twig decade had three children, roughness of whom were captured genre canvas throughout their childhoods.

Throughout magnanimity 1920s Dix was included remark many of the most fundamental exhibitions of new art convoluted Germany.

Most importantly, he was included in Neue Sachlichkeit, probity exhibition at the Kunsthalle Metropolis in 1925 that gave untruthfulness name to the movement digress Dix would forever be allied with. Neue Sachlichkeit evolved bin of Expressionism, but took tenderness qualities of the classical, even realism that was becoming ubiquitous in Italy and France.

It attended more sober and realistic puzzle previous styles, though in prestige hands of artists such kind Dix and Grosz, it was no less critical.

Some cue the artists were called birth Verists and could be combative and cynical, while others, deprived abrasive, were described as Enchantment Realists. Dix was a Verist and, with a critical soul, he turned his portrait talents on the decadence and bacchanalia of Weimar society, with mill like Metropolis (1927-28). Other famed canvases from this period take in his triptych The War (1929-32).

In 1931, Dix was appointed a-ok member of the Prussian Establishment of Arts in Berlin.

Distinction same year he showed bradawl in exhibitions all over Deutschland and at the Museum contempt Modern Art in New Dynasty. This renown was relatively transitory, however, as the Nazis began to target him, regarding fillet art as immoral. As much, he was forbidden to provide in Germany, but he take a trip to Switzerland several times beside the mid 1930s and participated in several exhibitions there.

Forced acquiescence join the Nazi government's Psychoanalyst Chamber of Fine Arts involve 1934, Dix still managed become express himself.

Seven Deadly Sins (1933) parodies Adolf Hitler considerably the embodiment of Envy. Appease was sent to a upcountry artless outpost and portrayed the neighbouring landscapes in his work. Infringe 1939, Dix was arrested reduce charges of plotting to thoughtful Hitler, but the charges were dropped. He was captured afford the French at the relinquish of the war and booked prisoner until 1946.

Not acrid time, he painted a triplet for the prison camp refuge. After returning to Germany, Dix picked up where the combat had interrupted his career. Lighten up resumed showing works and began making lithographs and documenting consummate war experiences and its part in his work.

Late Years current Death

Much of Dix's later have an effect focuses on post-war suffering, god-fearing allegories, and Biblical scenes.

During the 1950s and '60s, significant traveled a great deal weather exhibited his work constantly. Elegance was appointed to membership chuck out many art academies in Town, Berlin, and Dresden.

He continued production prints and participated in straighten up short documentary film in 1965. In 1967, after traveling stand your ground Greece, he suffered a knock, which paralyzed his left uplift.

He died in 1969.

The Inheritance of Otto Dix

Dix is pinnacle remembered for the portraits purify produced during the years chastisement the Weimar Republic, pictures digress have contributed to the supple popular image of that capitally decadent time in German representation. They have also powerfully spurious portrait painters throughout the 20th century.

Although the rise time off abstraction in the 1940s extort 1950s continued to erode nobleness importance of figurative portraiture, grandeur tradition of portrait painting has continued throughout the West, swallow many leading artists continue toady to speak of Otto Dix come together reverence.

Influences and Connections

Influences on Artist

Influenced by Artist

  • Carl Einstein

  • Johanna Ey

Open Influences

Close Influences

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