Otto Dix

C. Fisher, Connecticut
Sale: Christie’s, London, 13^th October 1994, lot 148
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Cambridge, Massachusetts, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University; Stuttgart, Graphische Sammlung, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Dresden, Albertinum Museum, German Realist Drawings of the 1920s, 1986, no. 26, illustrated in the catalogue
The Hague, Museum Paleis Lange Voorhout; Stockholm, Liljevalchs Konsthall; Helsinki, Helsingin Taidehalli and Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Art et Résistance: Les Peintres allemandes de l'entre-deux-guerres. La Collection Marvin et Janet Fishman, 1995-96, no. 25

Suse Pfäffle, Otto Dix, Werkverzeichnis der Aquarelle und Gouachen, Stuttgart, 1991, no. A 1922/94, illustrated p. 163
Kunst & Cultuur, Antwerp, June 1996, illustrated in colour p. 8

In 1922 Dix executed a series of three watercolours on the subject of sailors and exotic prostitutes (see: S. Pfäffle, op. cit., nos. A 1922/75 & A 1922/128), of which the present work is the finest example. Probably inspired by his trip to Hamburg the previous summer, where he visited the harbour as well as the red light district, Exotischer Puff treats the subject of prostitutes beggars, war cripples, circus people and other social outcasts of the Weimar Republic. Images of the demi-monde and people living on the margins of society dominate Dix’s works of the 1920s, painting a vivid, though harsh picture of post-war Germany. In 1921 Dix executed his first oil paintings of this subject, of which Der Salon (fig. 1) is one of the most important examples. The subject was considered so outrageous at the time that a pornography charge was levied against the artist.

Set in an imaginary location and populated with exotic prostitutes, this work nevertheless evokes the same urban underworld present in Dix’s city-scenes.  There is nothing romantic or escapist in the images of these exotic women; the impression is one of decadence and poverty – of society in decay.

Dix’s message, however, is not a quick accusation of this demi-monde, but rather a complex criticism of the society as a whole. As Fritz Löffler argues: ‘Dix’s social criticism must not be made to seem simpler than it is. At no time was he a cheap moraliser, pointing the finger and exposing the faults of his time… Dix identifies with the sailor from Pieschen, he takes pleasure in whores, he fights on the barricade and directs the beauty salon, he suffers beside the dead in the filth of the trench and is the hero who fetches the wounded to safety. 

Fig. 1, Otto Dix, Der Salon I, 1921, oil on canvas, Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart