Otto Dix

"I have made new things again that can cause nervous shock to the faint of heart; horror for moralists."

Otto Dix, quoted in Otto Dix: The Art of Life.

"I am a realist. I must see everything. I must experience all of life's abysses for myself."
Otto Dix spoke these words toward the end of his life, six years before his death in 1969. This credo is testimony to the artist's uncompromising commitment to even the harshest realism and stood as a guiding principle throughout his life. Dix's artistic development was intrinsically tied to the historical events and political debacles surrounding the two World Wars in Germany. As a soldier in the killing fields of World War I, Dix witnessed the brutality of industrialized warfare, the killing, the rape and the destruction. Registering all he witnessed and experienced in arresting artworks alone had meaning to him: to depict reality just as it is perceived, no matter how terrible or hideous. To reach this goal, he employed his exceptional proficiency in diverse artistic techniques and painting styles to express what existed in the world in the most compelling way possible. Dix's lifelong and unrelenting quest for uncompromising realism remains impressive and relevant to this day. His art has been shown in numerous exhibitions around the globe and continually earns ever greater recognition. Still, the themes of Dix's paintings, their portrayal and the artist's biography have also caused controversy. Dix viewed his artistic production outside of any social or religious moral framework; one could say he was politically incorrect avant la letter. His radical stance resulted in several trials during his lifetime, and to repeated posthumous accusations of glorifying violence and misogyny. Yet because Dix refrained from formulating a theoretical explanation of his art, it is rather difficult to ascertain the motivation or intention behind his more explicit works. It is therefore essential to view the "original" paintings, works on paper and prints and follow his often expressed principle, the closest he came to formulating an artist's statement: "Trust your eyes."

Philipp Gutbrod, excerpted from the preface to Otto Dix: The Art of Life.

MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Otto Dix: Hommage à Martha Essay by Karin Schick. Between 1921 and 1933, while painter Otto Dix was in his 30s and early 40s--in the years following the Great War, in which he had fought for Germany at the Somme,
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HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775716208
$35.00 | Awaiting stock

Otto Dix: Art to Read By Philipp Gutbrod. Few painters are as strongly linked to the historical events and political catastrophes of twentieth-century Germany as Otto Dix (1891–1969). Born to a working-class family at the turn of the twentieth
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HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775725811
$40.00 | In stock

Otto Dix: Watercolors Catalogue Raisonne
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HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775703345
$275.00 | Not available

Otto Dix

According to Philipp Gutbrod, author of Otto Dix: The Art of Life, Otto Dix "was a chameleon: a proletarian, a dandy, a big-city dancer, a professor and a provocateur. He needed these parallel identities in order to continually reinvent himself and to view the world from multiple perspectives. He was a 'fanatic of the truth' with one of the most piercing gazes of the twentieth century—an artist on the hunt for 'reality.'" Featured image, reproduced from The Art of Life, is a detail of Dix's 1933 canvas, "The Seven Deadly Sins."

Otto Dix: Art to Read

The Art of Life

By Philipp Gutbrod.
Published by Hatje Cantz

Few painters are as strongly linked to the historical events and political catastrophes of twentieth-century Germany as Otto Dix (1891–1969). Born to a working-class family at the turn of the twentieth century, he hurled himself into the art world of the prewar era, and fought and drew on the front during World War I; after 1918, he gave that war perhaps the most honest face bestowed on it by an artist. During the Weimar Republic, Dix emerged as an enfant terrible, a dandy and an urban sophisticate, but he was also a respected professor and pedagogue, until he was driven from his position by the Nazis a few months after they came to power. Ostracized and threatened under the Nazi regime, Dix retreated to Lake Constance, where he began painting in the broader brushstokes that characterize his final phase. Published in Hatje Cantz's new Art to Read series, Philipp Gutbrod's expertly written biography examines an eventful life and a multifaceted oeuvre.

OTTO DIX: ART TO READ
$40.00 | In Stock: Order now or contact your local bookstore or museum shop.