OTTO DIX (1891 Untermhaus bei Gera - 1969 Sin... Lot n° 30

At Langemarck (February 1918) Etching on copperplate printing paper. 1924. 24,3 x 28,9 cm (35,2 x 47,2 cm). Signed "Dix" and inscribed "VII". Edition of 70 num. Ex. Karsch 76. Strong impression with slightly drawing platemark and full margins. A heavy silence rises from the sheet and causes quiet discomfort. The viewer is effectively made aware of the extent of the destruction even more than a hundred years after the end of the First World War through the observations of the front-line soldier Dix. The motif titled "Bei Langemarck" (At Langemarck) initially makes one look for a place that simply no longer exists after three and a half years of material battle. Carcasses of shot-up houses and trees structure the rugged Flanders area, which is now only tenuously held together with barbed wire. Muddy waves of earth wash around the foreground of the picture, devouring the living and releasing the dead. With etching needle and aquatint, the artist eats into the medium as aggressively as the war eats into the landscape, thus creating - even several years after the experience and in the course of personal reappraisal - a document of captivating historical authenticity. The work is part of the 50-sheet cycle "The War". Printed by Otto Felsing, Berlin, Folder I, Sheet VII.