The harsh realities of wartime and Weimar-era Germany called for a new kind of art. Dada
followed by Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) confronted social and political issues in new
and bold ways. This book highlights how Otto Dix (1891-1969) - one of the leading artists
connected to these artistic movements - employed these new approaches to reveal the injustices
of wartime and post-World War I Germany. Having spent 38 months on the frontline his pictures
revealed the brutalities of the conflict and helped establish him as one of Europe's leading
modernists. Offering substantial new research and presenting numerous primary sources to an
English readership for the first time the book examines Dix's war pictures within the broader
visual culture of war in order to assess how they functioned alternatively as cutting-edge
modernist art and transgressive war commemoration. Each chapter provides a case study of the
first public display of one or more of Dix's war pictures at key exhibitions and explores how
their reception was subjected to changing socio-political and cultural conditions as well as
divergent attitudes to the lost war. It pulls together a number of key approaches and texts:
contemporary reviews contemporary cultural productions (such as novels and cartoons) and
theoretical and historical approaches from history memory studies and art history. Bringing a
unique perspective and original scholarship to Dix's war works this book is essential reading
for art historians of World War I and the visual culture of Weimar Germany.
