Famed for his realistic images of war, Otto Dix had plenty of memories to draw from. Believing, as many did, the WWI would be ‘the war to end all wars’ he volunteered for the German army and eventually found himself fighting at the Battle of the Somme on the western front as a non-commissioned officer of a machine gun unit where he was injured several times, seriously once when he was hit in the neck by shrapnel. He then fought on the eastern front until Russia and Germany negotiated peace whereupon he found himself back on the western front fighting the German spring offensive.
Having financed his way through the Dresden School of Arts by painting portraits, after the war he used his talent to paint war veterans whom he shared a kinship with. His paintings depicted the dark reality of the forgotten many, maimed and starving in 1920s Germany and became increasingly political and left-wing. His paintings was so shockingly graphic that one museum director was forced to resign for exhibiting them. In 1920 he exhibited in German Expressionists in Darmstadt. He produced a portfolio of 50 etchings called ‘War’ in 1924 and in 1928 and 1932 he painted perhaps his most famous works: the triptychs Metropolis and Trench Warfare.
In order to continue working as an artist after the fascists rose to power he was forced to join the Nazi controlled Imperial Chamber of Fine Arts, painting only landscapes, though he still painted a few paintings in defiance of their regime. They stripped him of his teaching post at the Dresden Academy and used his paintings of WWI such as The Trench and War Cripples in their propaganda exhibition Entartete Karst or Degenerate Artist. Later these paintings were burned.
In 1939 he was arrested and charged with conspiring against Hitler but was later released and the charges dropped.
During WWII he was conscripted into the Volkssturm or German national militia which led to his capture and imprisonment in a POW camp in France. He was released after the war in 1946 and returned to Dresden where he continued to paint on the themes of religion and post-war suffering. He died in 1969.
Works: Seven Deadly Sins
Trench Warfare
Metropolis
Showing posts with label expressionist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label expressionist. Show all posts
Sunday, 14 October 2007
Friday, 12 October 2007
German Expressionism: The Art of Revolution
The origins of the expressionist art movement are credited to the artists of Germany who worked between the world wars. Many of the soldiers who fought in the trenches of World Was I were artists, or were to become established as artists as the horrors of war sought an outlet form their memories.
These earliest of works showed contempt in equal measure for the butchery of human beings on the front lines and the bourgeois elite who sat at home patting themselves on the back for a job well done.
When the war was lost in 1918 the corrupt monarchy of Wilhelm II was overthrown and hope bloomed in the streets of Germany, and people breathed in the sweet scent of a new beginning with all its intoxicating promises. In this climate activist groups flourished, with calls for democracy and communism and right-wing regimes also filling the streets.
The artists of this time formed groups of their own and called on other artists to back the provisional government; the expressionists formed Arbeitsrat fur Kunst or the Workers Council for Art. They worked closely with the Novembergruppe who formed under the name and influence of the November Revolution which was a series of events culminating in the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on 9th November 1918 and the establishment of a parliamentary republic. These groups call for all artists, sculptors, painters, architects, writers and composers to unite and build a new society.
Swift action was taken by the right-wingers to oppose them, the same people who would form the core of the Nazi regime, who had prominent socialist leaders arrested and murdered. They took a year planning a coup to capture Berlin’s governmental buildings. Ultimately this move failed when 12 million German workers held a general strike which drove the right-wings from power. It was at this time, however, that the National Socialist German Works Party was founded, one of the most active and strong-voiced members of this party was one Adolph Hitler.
During this era of the fascist climb to power the artists worked hard to disparage them and their principles, producing work which expressed the grim future and highlighted the need for change. Though some artists sought to escape the current political climate in their work, producing portraits, landscapes or religious works, all felt the oppression beginning to descend.
When the Nazis did come to power the artists lost any status they had as teachers or painters, were forbidden to exhibit or create, many went into exile as their contemporaries were arrested and killed. Thousands of artworks were removed from public view in the museums and galleries of Germany, then the Nazis turned the power that the artists had once wielded against them when the formed their own exhibit of these same artist’s works. This they called the Entartete Kunst: Degenerate Art. Within the exhibition they mocked the works by hanging the badly, at angles and decorating them perversely with Nazi banners and badges.
The artists themselves were, the Nazis proclaimed, madmen, Jews and Communists and morally deficient. They succeeded in creating the end of art in Germany only for as long as they were in power, for after the liberation of the country many of the artists, some of whom who had forged successful careers in other countries, returned and resumed their posts as teachers in the academies and art schools and continues to produce great works of art.
These earliest of works showed contempt in equal measure for the butchery of human beings on the front lines and the bourgeois elite who sat at home patting themselves on the back for a job well done.
When the war was lost in 1918 the corrupt monarchy of Wilhelm II was overthrown and hope bloomed in the streets of Germany, and people breathed in the sweet scent of a new beginning with all its intoxicating promises. In this climate activist groups flourished, with calls for democracy and communism and right-wing regimes also filling the streets.
The artists of this time formed groups of their own and called on other artists to back the provisional government; the expressionists formed Arbeitsrat fur Kunst or the Workers Council for Art. They worked closely with the Novembergruppe who formed under the name and influence of the November Revolution which was a series of events culminating in the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on 9th November 1918 and the establishment of a parliamentary republic. These groups call for all artists, sculptors, painters, architects, writers and composers to unite and build a new society.
Swift action was taken by the right-wingers to oppose them, the same people who would form the core of the Nazi regime, who had prominent socialist leaders arrested and murdered. They took a year planning a coup to capture Berlin’s governmental buildings. Ultimately this move failed when 12 million German workers held a general strike which drove the right-wings from power. It was at this time, however, that the National Socialist German Works Party was founded, one of the most active and strong-voiced members of this party was one Adolph Hitler.
During this era of the fascist climb to power the artists worked hard to disparage them and their principles, producing work which expressed the grim future and highlighted the need for change. Though some artists sought to escape the current political climate in their work, producing portraits, landscapes or religious works, all felt the oppression beginning to descend.
When the Nazis did come to power the artists lost any status they had as teachers or painters, were forbidden to exhibit or create, many went into exile as their contemporaries were arrested and killed. Thousands of artworks were removed from public view in the museums and galleries of Germany, then the Nazis turned the power that the artists had once wielded against them when the formed their own exhibit of these same artist’s works. This they called the Entartete Kunst: Degenerate Art. Within the exhibition they mocked the works by hanging the badly, at angles and decorating them perversely with Nazi banners and badges.
The artists themselves were, the Nazis proclaimed, madmen, Jews and Communists and morally deficient. They succeeded in creating the end of art in Germany only for as long as they were in power, for after the liberation of the country many of the artists, some of whom who had forged successful careers in other countries, returned and resumed their posts as teachers in the academies and art schools and continues to produce great works of art.
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