Customer Reviews

Otto Dix

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Otto Dix (1891-1969) was a leading artist of the German Expressionist movement. He saw service in the German army during the entire course of World War One. His horrific experiences in the trenches of the Western and Eastern fronts had an immense influence on his psyche and his art. By the 1930's he was labelled as a degenerate artist by the Nazi regime and his ascerbic, grotesque style that was so harshly critical of the corruption of Weimar society dimmed dramatically. It was only in his later years that he was to receive a measure of the recognition that he deserved.

This book is a catalogue of an exhibition being presently held at the Neue Gallerie New York. It is the first retrospective of Dix's work to be held in North America and this volume is presently the only monograph in the English language available on this artist. While the exhibition features paintings, drawings and etchings created between 1919 and 1938, most emanate from the twenties, his greatest period. There are 170 art works illustrated in excellent color; included are 50 gruelling etchings from the renowned 1924 War cycle. Additionally there are portraits and scenes from life in Weimar Germany.

Dix's art makes uncomfortable viewing but there is a penetrating and powerful voice in his artistic vision. There is only a small overlap of paintings featured in the Metropolitan Museum's Glitter and Doom exhibition. Apart from the illustrations there are a variety of informative essays about Dix's life and world. This is an excellent publication that I recommend highly to those interested in 20th century art.

This book is the catalogue for the Dix exhibition currently held at the Neue Galerie in NYC, which will later travel to Montreal, Canada and which is the first one dedicated to this major artist in North America. Without being a comprehensive Dix retrospective (a fact which is readily acknowledged by the authors)since it concentrates on a 20-year timespan (1919-1939), it is a high-quality publication with top-class illustrations and a very interesting text that tends to divide Dix's works into four areas, the images of war (Dix is frequently compared to the great Goya in this respect), the portraits, the representation of sexuality and Dix's production during the Third Reich, a production all the more moving as Dix was one of the few German artists of the Weimar avant-garde who had chosen to remain in Germany after 1933, even though he obviously was an opponent of the Nazi regime. The low-key landscapes which he painted during that period are metaphoric criticisms of totalitarianism, and this is very well shown in the book.

There are several groundbreaking essays in this book and anyone interested in the New Objectivity movement of the 1920's in Germany should read the last one, which dwells on Dix's 1928 masterpiece "Metropolis" (now in Stuttgart)and analyses the artist's ability to represent the ugly "not as a symptom of a hopeless pessimism, but rather as an indication of the will to power of the artist (who) heroically said yes to brutal life in an art of the sweetest cruelty" (those last two words coming from a text by Nietzsche, whose philosophy was one of the main sources of inspiration for Otto Dix). Another essay studies the theme of sexual murder, a theme that is recurrent in Dix's art (especially in two missing masterpieces that disappeared during WWII), in German and Austrian art and literature in general (Grosz, Beckmann, Musil...).

Highly recommended.

This book describes the life and works of Otto Dix, a German expressionist painter. Each piece is shown with a little essay that critiques it on an individual level. It breaks up Dix's life according to where he was staying at the time, and it shows how important the period and location influenced him which is really helpful in understanding how Dix's work progressed. Dix seemed to be a master in flesh, and it's amazing to see the possibilities he was a bale to achieve especially considering the medium was tempera. The prints are really great quality too. I feel like it's hard to really gain an appreciation for the nuances of things like flesh through reproductions in a book, but this one does espcially well. The accompanying essays also really help to gain a greater appreciation for the pieces as well. Really amazing artist! I'd recommend him to anyone interested in technical skill as well as German expressionists.

My partner and I went to a gallery and saw some of Otto Dix's works. Stunning. We wanted to buy his book but it was sold out.

I'm very happy that Amazon was very efficient to deliver the book in a few days and the book is so inspiring, his drawings and painting are very strong and powerful.

I recommend anyone who is interested in Art to get this book.

Cheers,

Roberto