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Exhibition view

29.02.2008 – 30.03.2008

Otto Dix

Project

Curator: NAMU

Institute of Foreign Affairs (ifa) presents

OTTO DIX
CRITICAL GRAPHIC (1920-1924)
“THE WAR”, EAU-FORTE SERIES (1924)

29.02.–30.03.2008
Opening: 29.02.2008 (Friday) at 17.00

Joint project of the National Art Museum of Ukraine Спільний and German Cultural Center “Goethe Institute in Ukraine” presents 86 graphic works by the outstanding German artist Otto Dix.

The exhibition has 86 lithographs and eau-fortes dedicated to war and its results and the “The War” series, which includes five folders with ten eau-fortes in each. Gravures were issed in 1924 in “Nirendorf” Publishing House, Berlin, with 70 items circulation.

OTTO DIX (1891-1969) created paintings, graphics and pictures. He was born in Geri-Untermhaus (Thuringia). In 1919-1922 studied in Dresden Art Academy. Dix was the first learner of artists Max Feldbauer and Otto Gusman. He participated in Dresden “Secession 1919” Union creating. Studied in Düsseldorf Academy under Heinrich Hauen and Wilhelm Gerberholtz. From 1928 he became a professor of Dresden Academy. In 1933-1940 Dix was unseat from professor’s position and his works were prohibited for exhibiting.

«There are things that are unneedful of comments.
Acting has always been more important for me than speaking.
I take the reality visually and I am not a philosopher.
That is why I always have my own opinion,
in my pictures I show only the things that are real
and that have to be told in the name of the truth»

Otto Dix

No doubt, the “The War” eau-forte series is the most significant creatures by Otto Dix. Being a master of aquatint technique, its light-and-shade, in the gravures of this series Dix showed the idea that war events, their actual sober reality demands adequate reflection through incarnating these in paintings. In the pictures created in war times, mainly the futuristic and cubistic ones, a human is shown somewhere at the background and much attention is directed to landscape, in the “The War” eau-forte series it is hard to find a picture, which the artist did not dedicate to the image and topic of human being. It is hard to surpass inartificial character of his paintings, which comes, for sure, from the personal war impressions of Dix. A human is unhappy here, he is humiliated and is similar to an animal in these trenches, he is beaten, wounded, dying, crazy and poisoned with gases…

Otto Dix experienced the war himself and performed a great ground work. Pictures created by him at the front, trenches, became preliminary drafts, but up to the artist, they were only partially usable. From the memory he created new ones. A great artistic effort resulted in the work of art that rightfully holds a place close to “The Disasters of War” (1810 – 1820) by Francisco Goya revered by Dix.

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