OTTO DIX
German, 18911969
Woman Lying on a Leopard Skin (Liegende auf Leopardenfell),
1927
Oil on panel. 27 1/2 x 39 in. (70 x 99 cm)
Gift of Samuel A. Berger. 55.31
Severe economic hardship and a widespread sense of social dislocation led
many German artists in the years between the wars to create images of contemporary
disillusionment and decadence. Otto Dix and George Grosz became known as
the leading figures in the
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movement called Neue Sachlichkeit (New Realism). Distinct from the
preceding generation of German Expressionists, these artists emphasized
urban activity and collective, rather than personal, beliefs. Neue Sachlichkeit
artists often attacked the society that they felt perpetuated inequalities,
but they also delighted in presenting its attractions on occasion. In this
painting, Dix depicts the actress Vera Simailova, whose fashionable androgyny,
feline stare, and animal crouch create an odd fusion of repulsion and seduction,
opulence and vulgarity.
Woman Lying on a Leopard Skin is one in a number of |
penetrating portraits Dix made during the 1920s, the decade of his best
Neue Sachlichkeit portraits. In all these works, Dix's experimental
technique of mixing tempera pigment in oil and applying it to wood panel
recalls German Renaissance practices seen in the art of such old masters
as Dürer, Cranach, and Grünewald. Also reminiscent of German art
of the sixteenth century was his precise use of line and sense of airless
space. All of these characteristics were perhaps a response to the previous
movement of German Expressionism as seen in the Die Brücke and
Der Blaue Reiter groups. |
