Otto Dix (1891, Utermhaus, Germany-1969, Singen, Germany) was born near Gera, in eastern Germany.  After working as an apprentice to a decorative house painter in his hometown, he entered Dresden's School of Applied Arts in 1910.  His early work was in a colorful expressionist style.  He was influenced by exhibitions of paintings by Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch and Dresden's own "Die Brucke" (The Bridge) painters, a group of artists who produced emotionally expressive works.  But the most important influence on Dix's work was that he was a machine gunner in the German Army.  His wartime experiences, along with his observations of the economic and political chaos that followed the war, crystallized in a realistic, socially critical style that followed  in the footsteps of Bosch and Goya.

During the years following World War I, Dix became associated with George Grosz, Max Beckmann and other German artists who shared his critical view of society.  From 1919 to 1922 he studied painting at Dresden's Academy of Art.  He married Martha Koch and they moved to Berlin.   He became professor at Dresden's Academy of Art.  But in 1933 he was dismissed from Dresden's Academy and banned from exhibiting.  260 of Dix's works were confiscated from public collections.  In 1939, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo on suspicion of being involved in an attempt to assassinate Hitler.   

In 1934 the German Nazi government featured Dix's work in several exhibitions of what they called "degenerate art."  He was forbidden to teach or exhibit, and turned to less confrontational themes of allegory and landscape painting  until he was drafted into the army in 1945.  He was conscripted into the "Volkssturm" home defense force and ended up in a French prisoner-of-war camp, but he was released a year later.   

For many years after that, he concentrated on doing lithographs as well as painting portraits and biblical scenes, until 1967, when he suffered a stroke which left his left hand paralyzed.  He died  on July 25, 1969, in Singen, Germany.

Sources: Colin Dobbins, "Dix, Otto", Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2001; Robert Hughes, Time Magazine, September 16, 1974; ARTnews, December 1985; Hilton Kramer in Art & Antiques, date unknown

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