Born in Germany in 1891, Otto Dix
knew he had a passion for art due his cousin, Fritz Amann. By the time Dix was
nineteen, he entered a school of academy for applied arts called Kunstgewerbeschule.
Once World War I started, he enlisted as a German soldier. While on the front,
he was wounded in the neck and was forced to go home. After being home for some
time, he started painting images of the vivid nightmares he had been having.
When Dix became an art teacher at Dresden Academy, the Nazis ordered him to
step down from his teaching job. They took his paintings and burned them.
Hitler locked up Dix in jail for seven years before he was released. Once he
was out, he continued his war paintings until he died on July 25, 1969.
Dix’s paintings were heavily
influenced by the horrors he witnessed during the war. The triptych Trench Warfare uses many different
painting styles to accentuate the monstrosity of the war. For example, some
parts of the image are fuzzy. This shows that since there are many deaths
during the war, sometimes people are forgotten. Another symbolic message is in the sky of the
painting. Half is a dark brown color that represents death and despair and the
other half is bright and warm, which represents freedom and hope. There are
also mangled bodies, soldiers with gas masks, and corpses everywhere to give
viewers an image of what the front war like.
"The Needlessness of War." Web log post. : Trench Warfare by Otto Dix 1932. Spikey, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2013. <http://theneedlessnessofwar.blogspot.com/2011/05/trench-warfarewar-by-otto-dix-1932_12.html>.
"Daily Artist." Web log post. : Otto Dix (December 2, 1891 รข€“ July 25, 1969). EEH, 02 Jan. 2011. Web. 17 Mar. 2013. <http://dailyartist.blogspot.com/2011/01/otto-dix-december-2-1891-july-25-1969.html>.
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