The Neue Galerie New York presents “Otto Dix,” the first solo museum exhibition of works by this major German artist ever held in North America. This show was outstanding! and beautifully exhibited. The German expressionists were the artists I was most inspired by in my early 20′s and Otto Dix had a huge impact on me then and still does. I’ll never forget the first time I saw one of his paintings, the brutal honesty, hiding nothing and exposing everything. Purely captivated, I marveled at his ability to capture such vivid scenes and was quite enchanted by his ruthless and shocking realistic depictions of the retched battlefield, louche ballrooms, stout society burghers, limbless veterans and bedraggled prostitutes.
More than almost any other German painter, Otto Dix (1891-1969) and his works have profoundly influenced the popular notion of the Weimar Republic. His paintings were among the most graphic visual representatives of that period, exposing with unsparing and wicked wit the instability and contradictions of the time. The critic Paul Ferdinand Schmidt described the artist in 1926: “Dix comes along like a natural disaster:outrageous, inexplicably devastating, like the explosion of a volcano. One never knows what to expect from this wild man.”
The exhibition includes more than 100 masterpieces by Otto Dix, and addresses four themes. The first is Dix’s traumatic experiences as a soldier in World War I. The second is portraiture, a genre at which the artist excelled. The third is sexuality, a key theme in the Dix oeuvre. The fourth is religious and allegorical painting. The show includes the work that Dix is best known for—paintings from the so-called “golden Weimar years”—but to contextualize them, it also includes Dix’s work from the early 1920s, as well as his later work, produced as veiled protest against the Third Reich.
The Neue Galerie is a museum devoted to early 20th century German and Austrian art and design and is located in a landmark mansion built in 1914. Seeing any exhibit here is a real treat because of the grand character of the space. I find myself not only looking at the art but also at the amazing early 20th century detail surrounding it. The book store, the former library of the mansion, is a masterpiece in itself and I could spend literally hours in there.
“Otto Dix” continues through Aug. 30 at The Neue Galerie,
1048 Fifth Avenue, at 86th Street; (212) 628-6200, neuegalerie.org.
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