Otto Dix and Portraiture - Stuttgart Kunstmuseum Exhibition

Otto Dix (1891-1969) was a leading member of the Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity movement, who first held a group exhibition in Mannheim in 1925, along with Georg Grosz and Max Beckmann . The Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, southern Germany, which has one of the biggest collections of Dix's work has launched an ehibition of his work.

In 1923 Dix's painting, The Trench was purchased by the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. When the painting was exhibited in 1924 its depiction of decomposed corpses in a German trench created such a public outcry that the museum's director, Hans Secker, was forced to resign.

Best known for his impressionist portraits portraying the worst excesses of the Weimar underbelly his ruthless and disturbing realism upset the National Socialists when they obtained power in 1933. he was labelled as a "degenerate" and lost his job as a post as a teacher at the Dresden Academy teacher. Dix's dismissal letter said that his work "threatened to sap the will of the German people to defend themselves".

Dix's paintings The Trench and War cripples were exhibited in the state-sponsored Munich 1937 exhibition of degenerate art, Entartete Kunst. They were later burned.

The exhibition, entitled "Match: Otto Dix and the Art of Portraiture," will also show 88 portraits by other artists spanning the centuries, from Lucas Cranach and Andy Warhol. "It is only by seeing his works alongside the works of other artists that the timeless importance of Otto Dix the portraitist becomes clear," the exhibition curator Daniel Spanke told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

Pic at head of post - A 1923 portrait of Mrs. Martha Dix, the artist's longtime lover and later wife.

Gallery of pictures from the exhibition
Gallery of pictures that can be seen in Germany
Galleries of pictures worldwide

Newborn Baby 1927
Selbstbildnis (mit Zigarette) (Self-Portrait with Cigarette), 1922Drypoint34.6 x 27.4 cm (image)The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts purchase, funds from the Patrons of Art and Music 1960.72.14