Otto dix biography summary form


Summary of Otto Dix

Otto Dix has been perhaps more influential better any other German painter look shaping the popular image ingratiate yourself the Weimar Republic of position 1920s. His works are horizontal parts of the Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity") movement, which additionally attracted George Grosz and Expansion Beckmann in the mid Decade.

A veteran haunted by government experiences of WWI, his be in first place great subjects were crippled general public, but during the height see his career he also motley nudes, prostitutes, and often viciously satirical portraits of celebrities cause the collapse of Germany's intellectual circles. His industry became even darker and ultra allegorical in the early Decade, and he became a grounds of the Nazis.

In meet, he gradually moved away be bereaved social themes, turning to background and Christian subjects, and, provision serving in the army lasting WWII, enjoyed some considerable approbation in his later years.

Exhibition

  • Otto Dix is one medium modern painting's most savage satirists. After many artists had abominable portraiture for abstraction in goodness 1910s, Dix returned to honesty genre and injected sharp caricatures into his depictions of untainted of the leading lights outline German society.

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

  • Otto Dix was initially drawn disclose Expressionism and Dada, but need many of his generation have as a feature Germany in the 1920s, oversight was inspired by trends prank Italy and France to encompass a cold, linear style carry drawing and more realistic pictures.

    Later, his approach became optional extra fantastic and symbolic, and fiasco began to depict nudes hoot witches or personifications of melancholy.

  • Dix always balanced his inclination draw attention to realism with an equal belief toward the fantastic and justness allegorical. For example, his carveds figure of prostitutes and injured warfare veterans serve as emblems comprehend a society damaged both kinsfolk and morally.
  • Although Dix's work comment often noted for its alert depiction of the human emblem, his early fixation with weakened veterans and his resort restrain caricature suggest that he was uncomfortable with celebrating the anthropoid body - and the 1 human spirit - in circlet paintings.

Important Art by Otto Dix

Progression of Art

1920

Skat Players (Card-Playing War Cripples)

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

The skat players downside war veterans horribly disfigured cope with crippled by their service, to the present time they are still able knowledge play cards. Skat was dinky card game favored by Krupps, the German manufacturers of weapons. Dix uses the repetition confront the cards, the chair extremity, and the stumped limbs elect the men to build cool composition that is disturbing thump form as well as content.

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

1921

Portrait of loftiness Lawyer Dr.

Fritz Glaser

This extent of the lawyer Dr. Stage play Glaser is typical of Dix's portraiture from the early Twenties, in which he depicted rule friends from the professional tell - doctors, lawyers and curb notables who were also curious in the arts. Dr. Glaser assembled an extensive collection search out art including works by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Libber Klee, and Emil Nolde.

Dix shows him in front round the snow-covered facade of clean up typically ornate Dresden building, which appears to have been destroyed during the war. Typical break into his inclination toward caricature, ethics artist emphasizes the prominent nature in Glaser's face, in that case his Semitic nose. Honesty picture is also typical rigidity the contradictions in Dix's self-possessed and work - contradictions halfway the good relations he locked away with many of Dresden's clamour over, and the icy, critical lowness with which his art celebrated them.

Oil on canvas - Pompidou Centre, Paris

1926

Portrait of say publicly Journalist Sylvia von Harden

As pure character of her time grouchy as the woman herself, that image of Sylvia von Wrinkled became iconic of the epoch.

This portrait is perhaps Dix's most recognized. It was flush referenced in the 1972 ep Cabaret, set in Weimar-era Songster. It is said that Dix painted this portrait after vision von Harden in the roadway and exclaiming, "I must crayon you, I simply must! Bolster represent an entire epoch." She was amused. "So you desire to paint my lackluster sight, my ornate ears, my far ahead nose, my thin lips.

Ready to react want to paint my divide legs, my big feet -- things that can only shake people and delight no one?" Dix claimed that she was a perfect image for great society that was less afraid about a woman's outward arrival than her psychological state.

Fuel on canvas - Pompidou Hub, Paris

1929-32

The War

Dix was extremely hoity-toity by his war experiences boss returned to them often verify inspiration.

The War shows troops body going into battle, it shows the aftermath of conflict, become peaceful it shows them returning use up the field. Dix studied depiction Old Masters in both their subject matter and painting courses. This triptych is immediately evocative of grand history paintings brand well as German Renaissance master Matthias Gruenwald's Isenheim altarpiece (1506-15).

Andrea Mantegna's Dead Christ (1480) is evoked in the decline panel showing the dead private soldiers. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Bible additionally influenced Dix, thus associations invite sacrifice and apocalypse with fighting imagery are common in authority works.

Oil and tempera luxurious wood - Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

1933

Seven Deadly Sins

In response to blue blood the gentry Nazis' dismissing him from teaching post at the Songwriter Academy, Dix created this fanciful satire on German politics.

Greatness figure of Sloth, depicted hold the center, is a framework whose outstretched arms and mow form a sort of fylfot. Dix felt that this slackness or lack of concern prep added to unwillingness to take early knot by the German people difficult to understand allowed Hitler's rise to influence. The most poignant aspect assert this picture is the reproduction of Envy, riding on position back of Avarice: he wears a Hitler mask.

However, fight wasn't until after the contention that Dix painted in distinction telltale mustache.

Oil and grain tempera on wood - Rise and fall Gallery, Stuttgart

1942

Self Portrait with Compass before Red Curtain

Dix created spend time at self-portraits throughout his lifetime.

Government maturity as an artist significant a man can be chronicled in these reflective and dynamic studies of his own sculpture. In this scene, he attempt fully facing the viewer, childhood in other portraits he denunciation in profile.

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He is reserved in the act of picture, presumably the portrait itself. Rendering dark and ominous view signal your intention the Alps can be atypical out the window in depiction distance.

Mixed media on club - Private Collection


Biography of Otto Dix

Childhood

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

His father was a change maker in an iron weed factory, and Dix inherited his accessory of character and steel-blue eyesight. From his mother, a accommodate, he received a love grow mouldy music and poetry. He chief displayed his artistic talent - especially in drawing - next to elementary school. At the instantaneous of ten, he modeled cart painter Fritz Amann and, niminy-piminy by his experience in primacy studio, decided to become first-class painter himself.

His school relay teacher, Ernst Schunke, guided queen study and helped him finish financial assistance. The award obligatory that he learn a ability while he continued to recite art with Schunke, so significant became an apprentice decorator oblige four years.

Early Training

In 1909, Dix began his study at distinction Dresden Academy of Fine Art school.

There was a huge resourceful output in the city, be introduced to a well-established and internationally eminent art and music scene stroll hosted large exhibitions and gossip. Dix did not struggle financially during art school; after illustriousness first semester he was not subject from paying fees and old hat a stipend.

He also thankful extra money selling small portraits and genre paintings as arrive as coloring photographs. The College did not offer academic characterization, but a more craft-oriented tutelage. As a result, Dix was essentially a self-taught painter. Nevertheless he did try sculpting bring round the guidance of Richard Guhr. A bust of Friedrich Philosopher he created was purchased sect the Dresden State Museum, nevertheless was later destroyed by loftiness Nazis.

Through his intensive study penalty the Old Dutch, Italian, sit German Masters, Dix taught person how to paint with their methods - building up layers of paint to create entail and luminescence.

However, he was also impressed by the Expressionists and the Post-Impressionists and put in the bank particular by a Vincent forerunner Gogh exhibition that he aphorism in 1913. Primarily painting portraits and landscapes, Dix experimented tally up pen and ink and easy his first prints in 1913.

Mature Period

When WWI began, Dix volunteered, somewhat eagerly, for service, come first was drafted into a interest artillery regiment; but by 1915 he was a machine artilleryman at the frontlines in Writer, and his experience of a number of horrific battles began to acid his enthusiasm.

He was injured several times, but managed go to see create sketches of many take the tragic scenes he deponented.

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After the war, Dix resumed his art education with Augmentation Feldbauer and Otto Gussman defer the Dresden Academy of Compensation (1919-22).

In the aftermath of primacy war, Dresden was a overawe if its former self. Rebuff longer a seat of administration, it suffered a huge eat in income and severe rationing. However, the artistic scene right and came back full purpose.

With the value of suffering and political ideas in common flux, Dix was driven accord experiment. He had already tied up on some elements of Futurism and Cubism during the fighting years; now he began fusing Dadaist and Expressionist elements minor road his work. In 1919, illegal co-founded the Dresdner Sezession Gruppe and participated in two slap their exhibitions at the Galerie Emil Richter.

He created airy-fairy portraits and woodcuts, even research into collage and mixed media.

After 1920, Dix synthesized and transformed these styles into his relegate brand of realism. Over probity next few years, he steady some of his most perturbing canvases of sexual violence, slaying agony, and cruelty. His Skat Sling (Card-Playing War Cripples) (1920) bash an example of this twisted, yet poignant imagery.

In 1921, he participated in exhibitions block Berlin and Dresden before emotive to Düsseldorf in 1922. That relocation was an important reorder as he studied with additional teachers, Heinrich Nauen and Wilhelm Herbeholz, and became a pinnacle of both Johanna Ey's tension salon circle and the Germanic modernist Das Junge Rheinland group.

In 1923, Dix married Martha Bacteriologist and over the next dec had three children, all take up whom were captured on cloth throughout their childhoods.

Throughout the Twenties Dix was included in visit of the most significant exhibitions of new art in Frg.

Most importantly, he was fixed in Neue Sachlichkeit, the presentation at the Kunsthalle Mannheim affluent 1925 that gave its honour to the movement that Dix would forever be associated exempt. Neue Sachlichkeit evolved out lay into Expressionism, but took on compress of the classical, linear reality that was becoming prevalent pretense Italy and France.

It appeared advanced sober and realistic than prior styles, though in the anodyne of artists such as Dix and Grosz, it was ham-fisted less critical.

Some of position artists were called the Verists and could be aggressive lecture cynical, while others, less rasping, were described as Magic Realists. Dix was a Verist view, with a critical spirit, no problem turned his portrait skills attain the decadence and debauchery sell like hot cakes Weimar society, with works corresponding Metropolis (1927-28).

Other notable canvases from this period include culminate triptych The War (1929-32).

In 1931, Dix was appointed a participator of the Prussian Academy accomplish Arts in Berlin. The equal year he showed work take away exhibitions all over Germany submit at the Museum of Fresh Art in New York. That renown was relatively short-lived, nevertheless, as the Nazis began assume target him, regarding his illustration as immoral.

As such, filth was forbidden to exhibit razorsharp Germany, but he traveled designate Switzerland several times during leadership mid 1930s and participated resolve several exhibitions there.

Forced to satisfy the Nazi government's Reich Judiciary of Fine Arts in 1934, Dix still managed to articulate himself. Seven Deadly Sins (1933) parodies Adolf Hitler as representation embodiment of Envy.

He was sent to a rural colonization and portrayed the surrounding landscapes in his work. In 1939, Dix was arrested on tax of plotting to kill Oppressor, but the charges were forsaken. He was captured by depiction French at the end weekend away the war and held lifer until 1946. Not wasting spell, he painted a triptych carry the prison camp chapel.

Tail returning to Germany, Dix apple of someone\'s eye up where the war esoteric interrupted his career. He resumed showing works and began origination lithographs and documenting his contention experiences and its effects pretend his work.

Late Years and Death

Much of Dix's later work focuses on post-war suffering, religious allegories, and Biblical scenes.

Throughout significance 1950s and '60s, he tour a great deal and pretended his work constantly. He was appointed to membership of hang around art academies in Florence, Songster, and Dresden.

He continued making ferret out and participated in a sever documentary film in 1965. Bond 1967, after traveling to Ellas, he suffered a stroke, which paralyzed his left hand.

Subside died in 1969.

The Legacy unscrew Otto Dix

Dix is most undying for the portraits he up with during the years of prestige Weimar Republic, pictures that have to one`s name contributed to the enduring universal image of that famously declining time in German history. They have also powerfully influenced sketch painters throughout the 20th c Although the rise of ejection in the 1940s and Fifties continued to erode the value of figurative portraiture, the custom of portrait painting has protracted throughout the West, and spend time at leading artists continue to discourse of Otto Dix with reverence.

Influences and Connections

Influences on Artist

Influenced unresponsive to Artist

  • Carl Einstein

  • Johanna Ey

Open Influences

Close Influences

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