Dix, Otto, 1891–1969, German painter and draftsman. Dix fought in World War I and returned to Düsseldorf haunted by the horrors he had witnessed. Associated with the new objectivity new objectivity (Ger. Neue Sachlichkeit), German art movement of the 1920s. The chief painters of the movement were George Grosz and Otto Dix, who were sometimes called verists.
..... Click the link for more information. movement in German expressionism expressionism, term used to describe works of art and literature in which the representation of reality is distorted to communicate an inner vision. The expressionist transforms nature rather than imitates it.
..... Click the link for more information. , he depicted the sordid world of prostitutes and swindlers with a painful precision and intensity. In 1924 he published War, a series of 50 etchings, fantastic visions executed with great clarity. Accused of an attempt on Hitler's life in 1939, he was imprisoned in Dresden and later made prisoner of war by the French. After the war he worked in West Germany.

Dix, Otto

“Parents of the Artist,” oil on canvas by Otto Dix, 1921; in the Öffentliche …

(credit: Courtesy of the Offentliche Kunstsammlung and the Emanuel Hoffman-Stiftung, Basel, Switz.; photograph, Hans Hinz)

(born Dec. 2, 1891, Untermhaus, Thuringia, Ger.—died July 25, 1969, Singen, Baden-Württemberg, W.Ger.) German painter and printmaker. He studied at the academies of Düsseldorf and Dresden and experimented with Impressionism and Dada before arriving at Expressionism with a nightmarish personal vision of contemporary social reality, depicting the horrors of war and the depravities of a decadent society with great emotional effect. He was appointed professor at the Dresden Academy in 1926 and elected to the Prussian Academy in 1931. His antimilitary works aroused the wrath of the Nazi regime and he was dismissed from his academic posts in 1933. His later work was marked by religious mysticism. See also Neue Sachlichkeit.