Otto Dix is considered one of the most important representatives of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) of the 1920s. He was born in Thuringia, near Gera, in 1891. After training as a decorative painter he studied at Dresden’s school of applied arts, the Kunstgewerbeschule, until 1914. During the First World War he served at the front. In 1919 he continued his studies at the academies in Dresden and Düsseldorf. He there produced series of pictures that are critical of society and anti-war, among them Der Krieg (The War), a cycle of fifty etchings. In 1919 Dix was a founding member of the Dresden Secession and was in contact with the Dadaists. He first tended towards Expressionism, but around 1920 developed an increasingly realistic painting style. Starting in 1925 he again lived and worked in Berlin, but in 1927 he moved to Dresden to assume a professorship at the academy. In 1933 he was dismissed by the Nazis and forbidden from showing his work. In 1945 he was drafted and taken a prisoner of war in France. In the post-war period Dix exhibited widely and received many awards, including the Rembrandt Prize from the Goethe-Stiftung Salzburg. In his late work he turned to landscape painting and allegorical and religious themes. Dix died in 1969 in Singen near Lake Constance.
