DIX, OTTO

* 2.12.1891 Untermhaus, † 25.7.1969 Singen

Heinrich Otto Dix was an important German painter and graphic artist of the 20th century. Dix was born on 2 December 1891 in Untermhaus into a working-class family. After an apprenticeship as a decorative painter, he moved to Dresden to study at the School of Arts and Crafts. In numerous works, he captured the horrors experienced during his military service as a volunteer in the First World War. After the end of the war, he continued his studies at the Dresden Art Academy and took part in the first international Dada fair in Berlin in 1920. In 1923, he married Martha Koch, with whom he had three children. He lived in Berlin for three years from 1925.

Like Georg Grosz and Max Beckmann, Otto Dix became a member of ‘New Objectivity’, the leading art movement of the Weimar Republic. His many grotesque portrait paintings are characteristic of his style. Dix employed the old master technique of glazing and the use of fine layers of paint that allowed the ground colour to shimmer through and which made last minute changes all but impossible. In 1932, he completed his most famous work, the imposing triptych ‘The War’, in which he processed his experiences of the First World War.

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Dix lost his position as professor at the Academy of Art in Dresden. Although the National Socialists vilified his works as degenerate art, destroyed some of them and banned him from exhibiting, he remained in Germany and painted landscapes in the style of the old masters. His later works never regained the vigour of the 1920s, however. Otto Dix died on 25 July 1969 in Singen near Lake Constance.