Otto Dix (1891-1969)

Otto Dix was a German painter and printmaker, known for his grotesque portrait paintings, brutal depictions of war and the Weimer society. Exposed to artwork at an early age, Dix spent a lot of time in his older cousin’s art studio, Fritz Amman who was a landscape painter. Between 1906 and 1910, he served an apprenticeship with painter Carl Senff, learning to paint landscapes. In 1910, he entered the Kunstgewerbeschule in Dresden (Academy of Applied Arts), where Richard Guhr was among his teachers. 

WWI was an event that profoundly shaped Dix’s artwork. He volunteered for the War in 1915 and was discharged in 1918. Throughout the war, Dix kept a diary and sketchbook to record his experiences. His sketches served as material for a major series called, “The War” which was published in 1924. Most of these experiences were horrific and therefore many of his illustrations expressed some form of trauma. WW1 affected the development of Expressionism because many artists wanted to convey their emotional experience that affected them during the war. Whether because they were a soldier or not, they were emotionally scarred and wanted to show the emotional violence or hatred of the war.  

Dix later became a founder of the Dresden Secession group in 1919, during his expressionist phase. In 1920 he met George Grosz. Influenced by Dada, he began incorporating collage elements into his works, some of which he exhibited in the first Dada Fair in Berlin. 

Sources:

https://www.moma.org/artists/1559

https://www.wikiart.org/en/otto-dix

http://www.artnet.com/artists/otto-dix/

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-artists/otto-dix.htm

Images:

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Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

Odilon Redon was a leading French artist of the Symbolism movement, a European movement at the end of the nineteenth century. He depicted a variety of motifs, including dreams, floral still lifes, landscapes, and mythological scenes. Early in his career, he worked almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography, works referred to as noirs. He made some 30 etchings and 170 lithographs over a period of twenty years his life and from 1870 to 1890, he predominantly worked with charcoal. The noirs exemplify Redon’s fascination with the impact and resonance of black. As with this lithograph, he printed almost exclusively using chine appliqué. Starting in the 1890s, he began to use pastel to add color to his charcoal works.

Redon was a symbolist, not a surrealist. He was connected to literature such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire and influenced by artists like Gustave Moreau and Goya, to whom in fact he dedicated a series of prints. He also developed a keen interest in Hindu and Buddhist religion and culture, which increasingly showed in his work. He was an unsuccessful art student at first. Very slowly, however, he taught himself the discipline of printmaking. It was his atmospheric and symbolist prints, with their dark and cloudy ground and their enigmatic figures, that finally began to win him some public attention. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Gallery in London.

I was immediately drawn to his mysterious and disturbing art style and aesthetics because of how his work was so original and different from what other artists were creating during his time. Redon was a great artist who was a contemporary of the Impressionists without being one; who was close to Symbolism without letting himself become trapped by their lively aesthetic approach. I definitely did not expect to see this creepy and ominous yet stunning psychedelic art style from the Post-Impressionism time period. Although I probably would be too scared to look at his drawings in the middle of the night!

Sources:

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/redon-odilon/

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-artists/odilon-redon.htm

http://www.artnet.com/artists/odilon-redon/