Otto Dix captures the violence and brutality of wars front lines in Der Krieg

07.10.2014
08:24 am
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Otto Dix

Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas

When World War I broke out, German artist Otto Dix volunteered for the army. He spent three
years on the front lines, amidst some of the most horrifying violence imaginable, before being
discharged a few weeks after the wars end. He returned home with a nasty case of PTSD and
a new artistic motivation, helping to form the progressive, pacifist artists collective, the
Dresden Secession. In 1923, he debuted The Trench, an anti-war painting so disturbing the
museum hid it behind a curtain. The Mayor of Cologne not only backed out of purchasing
The Trench, he got the museum director fired for even displaying it.
A year later, he published Der Krieg, a collection of 50 etchings inspired by the war, a
sampling of which you see here. The harsh lines and brutal textures exude a violent intensity
that seems to accost the viewer. (If you recognize a bit of gonzo in the illustrations, youre
picking up on one of Ralph Steadmans major influences.) Dix was quickly labeled a
degenerate artist when the Nazis took power, and over 260 of his paintings were seized
many of them burned. For a long time The Trench was believed to have been among them, but
a bill of sale exists from 1940, leaving many with the hope that it may still be rediscovered
someday unharmed.
Although Dix was eventually absorbed into the Nazi propaganda machine, (forced to paint
properly nationalist landscapes), he secretly continued to paint anti-Nazi artmany pieces
were later found in the 2012 Munich artwork discovery. At one point Dix was even arrested
under suspicion of trying to assassinate Hitler, but the accusation was spurious and he was
released. In a horrible irony, the pacifist Dix was conscripted into the Volkssturm. He was

eventually captured by the French, but he was released at wars end, and lived to see his work
like Der Krieg, extolled and immortalized all over the world.

Soldiers Grave Between the Lines

Buried Alive - January 1916, Champagne

Gas victims - Templeux-la-Fosse, August 1916

Crater Field Near Dontrien Lit Up by Flares

Wounded Soldier - Autumn 1916, Bapaume

Mealtime in the Trenches

Dance of death 1917

Dead Man in the Mud

Evening on the Wijtschaete Plain - Nov 1917

Bomb-crater with flowers - Spring 1916