''The War'' (German: "Der Krieg"), sometimes known as the ''Dresden War Triptych'', is a large oil painting by

Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with George ...

on four wooden panels, a

triptych A triptych ( ; from the Greek adjective ''τρίπτυχον'' "''triptukhon''" ("three-fold"), from ''tri'', i.e., "three" and ''ptysso'', i.e., "to fold" or ''ptyx'', i.e., "fold") is a work of art (usually a panel painting) that is divided ...

with

predella In art a predella (plural predelle) is the lowest part of an altarpiece, sometimes forming a platform or step, and the painting or sculpture along it, at the bottom of an altarpiece, sometimes with a single much larger main scene above, but oft ...

. The format of the work and its composition are based on religious triptychs of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

, like those by

Matthias Grünewald Matthias Grünewald ( – 31 August 1528) was a German Renaissance painter of religious works who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century. His first name is also given ...

. It was begun in 1929 and completed in 1932, and has been held by the

Galerie Neue Meister The Galerie Neue Meister (, ''New Masters Gallery'') in Dresden, Germany, displays around 300 paintings from the 19th century until today, including works from Otto Dix, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. The gallery also exhibits a ...

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

since 1968. It is one of several anti-war works done by Dix in the 1920s, inspired by his experience of

trench warfare Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. Trench warfare became ar ...

in the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Background

Dix was an art student in

before the First World War. He was conscripted in 1915, and served in the Imperial German Army as a machine gunner on the Eastern and Western Fronts. He returned to study at the

Dresden Academy of Fine Arts The Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (German ''Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden''), often abbreviated HfBK Dresden or simply HfBK, is a vocational university of visual arts located in Dresden, Germany. The present institution is the produc ...

, and then in Italy. After the war, he was a founder of the short-lived avant-garde

Dresdner Sezession The Dresdner Sezession (Dresden Secession) was an art group aligned with German Expressionism founded by Otto Schubert, Conrad Felixmüller and his pupil Otto Dix in Dresden, during a period of political and social turmoil in the aftermath of Wor ...

art group, and then supported the post-expressionist

New Objectivity The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, wh ...

movement. The anti-war art that Dix created after 1920 was inspired by his horrific experiences in the trenches. Before this triptych, he completed his large anti-war painting '' The Trench'' in 1923, which caused great controversy when first exhibited, and he published a portfolio of fifty prints also entitled ''Der Krieg'' in 1924. Dix became a professor at the Dresden Academy in 1927. He started working on the triptych soon after the tenth anniversary of the end of the First World War, as a reaction to the popular public perception of the war as a heroic experience. The painting was first exhibited at the autumn exhibition of the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1932. Many of Dix's works were condemned as

degenerate art Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...

by the Nazi Party, but the triptych was hidden by Dix and survived. Several of Dix's preparatory

cartoons A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...

are held by the

Hamburger Kunsthalle The Hamburger Kunsthalle is the art museum of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany. It is one of the largest art museums in the country. The museum consists of three connected buildings, dating from 1869 (main building), 1921 (Kuppelsaa ...

. ''The War'' was bought by the

in Dresden for 500,000 Deutsche Marks in 1968.

Description

The triptych has three main panels, with a fourth as a supporting panel or

below the main central panel. The large central panel is a square; the flanking panels to either side the same height but half the width, each; and the predella below the central panel has the same width but is only high. From left to right, the left wing depicts a column of German soldiers marching away from the viewer through the fog of war towards the battle in the central scene. The central panel shows a devastated urban landscape scattered with war paraphernalia and body parts, reworking the themes in his 1923 work ''The Trench'', and divided like the 16th century

Isenheim Altarpiece The ''Isenheim Altarpiece'' is an altarpiece sculpted and painted by, respectively, the Germans Nikolaus of Haguenau and Matthias Grünewald in 1512–1516. It is on display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, in France. It is Grünewal ...

with a living side to the lower left and a dead side to the upper right. A skeletal figure floats above the scene, pointing to the right, with a soldier in gas mask below, and scabrous legs upended to the right, recalling the legs of Christ in Grünewald's crucifixion scene. The right wing shows several figures withdrawing from the fight. A dominant greyish figure, helping a wounded comrade, is a self-portrait of Dix, in a composition similar to a

descent from the cross The Descent from the Cross ( el, Ἀποκαθήλωσις, ''Apokathelosis''), or Deposition of Christ, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospels' accounts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after hi ...

or a

pietà The Pietà (; meaning " pity", "compassion") is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus after his body was removed from the cross. It is most often found in sculpture. The Pietà is a specific form ...

. In the predella, several soldiers are lying next to each other, possibly sleeping under an awning, or perhaps they represent the dead in a tomb. This fourth panel is based on ''

The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb ''The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb'' is an oil and tempera on limewood painting created by the German artist and printmaker Hans Holbein the Younger between 1520 and 1522. The work shows a life-size, grotesque depiction of the stretched ...

'' by Hans Holbein the Younger. The painting uses a restricted palette of mainly dark colours, with cold greens, greys, and whites for death and decay, and warm reds and oranges for blood, destruction and shellfire.

References

The War
Otto Dix 1929–32, Google Arts & Culture
Der Krieg (Triptychon)
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Otto Dix: Der Krieg - das Dresdner Triptychon

OTTO DIX (1891-1969), ''Der Krieg'' engravings
. Christie's, 19 September 2017 * Tatar, Maria. "Fighting for Life: Figurations of War, Women, and the City in the Work of Otto Dix." German Politics & Society, no. 32 (1994): 28–57. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23736326.
Unpacking a painting

Otto Dix, Der Krieg: Mitteltafel - Karton zu dem Triptychon "Der Krieg", 1930
{{DEFAULTSORT:War Dix Triptych Paintings by Otto Dix Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden 1932 paintings War paintings

Background

Description

See also

References