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拍品专文
This drawing will be included in the forthcoming supplement to the Dix catalogue raisonné under no. EDV 5.3.30, currently being prepared by Dr U. Lorenz from the Dix Foundation, Vaduz.
At the Dresden Akademie der Bildenden Künste, where Dix enrolled in 1919, he was invariably drawn to those models whose bodies bore the physical ravages of their lives, widows, pregnant women, worn-out prostitutes, or those trying to mask their deformities through heavily applied cosmetics. As Dix himself recalled of this period, 'There was a colossal number of different types. I was always after types. The streets, the cafés, there you could find everything, I felt close to everything there. The sad, the everyday enticed and inspired me' (quoted in F. Löffler, Otto Dix: Life and Work, New York, 1982, p. 11).
Before 1918, Dix had certainly depicted prostitutes, but in the immediate post-war years they would become one of the central themes of his oeuvre. The thousands of dead and crippled soldiers represented an emotional but also financial loss for widows, who were forced to join the ranks of prostitution to survive this period of chronic inflation. Dix discovered in the withered and grotesque bodies of the prostitutes he depicted, not only a metaphor for the times in which he lived, but also a perverse beauty. The subject of the present work, Marry, is depicted sitting in profile, her majestic rear and elongated back facing the artist and viewer. She leans forward, supporting her weight by resting her elbow on her right knee. Nude, except for her gartered stockings and high heeled shoes, she nonetheless affects an arrogant air, albeit time-worn and practiced. Her head held high, she inhales nonchalantly from a cigarette holder, as she stares directly ahead. She is a victim and a mirror of the times, an icon of modern life in Weimar Germany.
At the Dresden Akademie der Bildenden Künste, where Dix enrolled in 1919, he was invariably drawn to those models whose bodies bore the physical ravages of their lives, widows, pregnant women, worn-out prostitutes, or those trying to mask their deformities through heavily applied cosmetics. As Dix himself recalled of this period, 'There was a colossal number of different types. I was always after types. The streets, the cafés, there you could find everything, I felt close to everything there. The sad, the everyday enticed and inspired me' (quoted in F. Löffler, Otto Dix: Life and Work, New York, 1982, p. 11).
Before 1918, Dix had certainly depicted prostitutes, but in the immediate post-war years they would become one of the central themes of his oeuvre. The thousands of dead and crippled soldiers represented an emotional but also financial loss for widows, who were forced to join the ranks of prostitution to survive this period of chronic inflation. Dix discovered in the withered and grotesque bodies of the prostitutes he depicted, not only a metaphor for the times in which he lived, but also a perverse beauty. The subject of the present work, Marry, is depicted sitting in profile, her majestic rear and elongated back facing the artist and viewer. She leans forward, supporting her weight by resting her elbow on her right knee. Nude, except for her gartered stockings and high heeled shoes, she nonetheless affects an arrogant air, albeit time-worn and practiced. Her head held high, she inhales nonchalantly from a cigarette holder, as she stares directly ahead. She is a victim and a mirror of the times, an icon of modern life in Weimar Germany.