OTTO DIX (1891 Untermhaus bei Gera - 1969 Sin... Lot n° 29

Death and resurrection 6 drypoint works on copperplate printing paper. 1922. Approx. 34,5 x 27,5 cm (approx. 50 x 44 cm). All sheets signed "Otto Dix" and inscribed "I-VII". Edition of 50 num. Ex. Karsch 43-48. Each magnificent print with wide, full margins. In this six-part series, Dix vividly sketches the aftermath of the First World War. For with the conclusion of peace in November 1918, the dying is far from over - political unrest, unemployment and famine shake the country. The drastic nature of the situation is effectively intensified by the hard-edged portrayal of selected individual fates: There is the old man who ends his life by hanging and, bizarrely cramped in rigor mortis, hangs in front of the left wall of his barren, claustrophobically narrow room. Between the mortal shell and what once wrapped the body sits the relaxed reading soul of the deceased (I). There is the brutally murdered and genitally mutilated prostitute, in front of whose blood-soaked bed two dogs copulate unflinchingly (II). There is the scowling sailor, squatting on a barricade of things and shot-up comrades-in-arms, firing against the invisible enemy (III). There is the young pregnant woman in the demeanor of an old woman, sharing physiognomy with the emaciated corpse at her feet (IV). There is the soldier who died violently, peacefully bedded in the cushion-like heaped up soil, nourishing flora and fauna with his remains (V). The finale is the middle-aged dead woman who attends her own funeral as a spirit being and smilingly contrasts the haggard face of her corpse in the coffin. Those who remain in the earthly vale of tears bear the burden of their loss, while the figure of light floats unencumbered toward eternity (VI). In the fall of 1922, Dix left Dresden for Düsseldorf, where he moved into a studio at the Academy of Art and received extensive training in printmaking techniques from Wilhelm Herberholz, the chair of free graphics there. Until then, the artist had loosely collected his works on paper in folders, but now he began to work through the themes that were driving him in a closed format. Three series of etchings were created during the Düsseldorf period: the ten-part "Circus" (1922), "Death and Resurrection" (1922) and the fifty-part, virtuoso "War" (1924). The first two portfolios were self-published.