Otto Dix

When World War I broke out in 1914, Otto Dix was a student at the School of Applied Arts in Dresden. Drafted into the German army in early 1915, he served as a machine-gun guard in the trenches of both the Eastern and Western Fronts, where he was wounded several times. For Dix, World War I demonstrated the total bankruptcy of both a society and its culture, and he deplored the use of rational argument and modern killing instruments to send millions to their death. After the war, ensuing social and political upheavals and political instability in Germany witnessed the emergence of the so-called Generation of 1914 artists that included Dix, George Grosz (1893–1959), and Rudolf Schlichter (1890–1955). Fueled by a common loathing for industrialized militarism and myopic nationalism, these and other artists forged by the mid-1920s a new German realism collectively called Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). This brutally descriptive style is remarkable for its unsentimental, sometimes deeply cynical, and often satirical records of the daily activities, sites, and mores of the city dweller in postwar Germany. Although the prewar generation of German Expressionists disavowed Dix for his bitter cynicism and unsparingly realist style, his mature paintings, drawings, and prints exhibit the highly personal content characteristic of Expressionist art.