Otto Dix: Want

“I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all – or am I? Perhaps I was an inquisitive person. I had to see all that for myself. I’m such a realist, you know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in order to confirm that it's like that. I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths of life for myself; it's for that reason that I went to war, and for that reason I volunteered.”

Otto Dix

in the German army during world War 1. (1914-1918)
Quote from Otto Dix, 1891-1969, exhibition catalogue, London: Tate Gallery, 1992, pp. 17–18; cf. pp. 27–28; as cited by Roy Forward, in 'Education resource material: beauty, truth and goodness in Dix's War' https://nga.gov.au/dix/edu.pdf, p. 9

Life , War , World , Personality

“After Herberholz had shown me all sorts of techniques, I suddenly got very interested in etching. I had a lot to say, I had a subject. Wash off the acid, put on the aquatint: a wonderful technique that you can use to get as many different shades and tones as you want. The 'doing' aspect of art becomes tremendously interesting when you start doing etchings; you get to be a real alchemist.”

Otto Dix

Otto Dix quoted by Eva Karcher, in Otto Dix, New York: Crown Publishers, 1987, p. 22; as cited by Roy Forward, in 'Education resource material: beauty, truth and goodness in Dix's War' https://nga.gov.au/dix/edu.pdf, p. 10

Art

“If I can't be famous, I want at least to be infamous.”

Otto Dix

Remark of 1919, as quoted in German Expressionism 1915-1925 : The Second Generation (1988) by Stephanie Barron. p. 71

“I'm a man who is concerned with reality. I have to see everything. I have to plumb the depths of life. And so I go to war. That's why I volunteered [in the German army]. And when I tell people that nowadays, they say, "Good grief, so Dix was an out-and-out militarist! How does that fit together? He painted a war picture that was so frightful, so horrific, and now he says he was a militarist?" Yes, that's just it! What I said was: "If you want to be a hero, you have to see this whole mess and still say yes to it.”

Otto Dix

Quote from Otto Dix, 1891-1969, p. 280; as cited in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 80

Life , War , People , Reality