DIX, OTTO

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DIX, OTTO (1891–1969), artist; best known for his harsh portraits of postwarGerman society. Born in Untermhaus, near Gera, he studied art privately in1905–1909 while working in Gera as a decorator's apprentice. His artistic trainingbegan in 1909 at Dresden's Technische Hochschule; he remained in theSaxon capital for five years. But it was his wartime ordeal as commander of amachine-gun unit that led to the stark black-and-white drawings of the 1920s.After the war he returned to Dresden to study at the prestigious Kunstakademie.Although Dix was a founding member of Dresden's predominantly ExpressionistSezessiongruppe 1919, his work increasingly reflected the mentality espousedby German Dada.* Intent on rendering the dreadful reality of both thewar and postwar German society, he rejected Expressionism* and endeavored,as he later explained, ‘‘to achieve a representation of our age, for I believe thata picture must above all express a content, a theme.'' In concert with GeorgeGrosz,* his art linked humor with irony and satire. The themes of poverty,suffering, and prostitution were central to his attack on the morality of postwarbourgeois society. During 1922–1925 he studied at the Du¨sseldorf Kunstakademie,became a member of the group Das junge Rheinland, and worked primarilyin watercolors. Having joined and exhibited with the Berliner Sezessionin 1924, Dix relocated to Berlin* in 1925 and worked as a freelance artist.Reducing the irony and eroticism evident in much of his early Weimar work,his Berlin period (1925–1927) was marked by his pitilessly realistic portraiture.With some regret he left Berlin in 1927 to begin a successful teaching career atDresden's Kunstakademie. Appointment to the Prussian Academy of Arts followedin 1931. His art, especially after 1929, was increasingly obsessed withwar, death, and dying, perhaps best depicted in his graphic cycle Krieg (War),painted during 1929–1932.When the Nazis seized power, most of Dix's work was labeled pornographicor grotesquely unheroic. Dismissed from his post and forced to resign his membershipin the Prussian Academy, he was forbidden to exhibit in 1934. About260 of his works were impounded; 26 were included in the 1937 travelingexhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). In 1939 he was briefly arrestedunder suspicion of being part of a Munich conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.*