Otto Dix – Der böse Blick

Feb 11 — Mai 28, 2017

  • Installation view of the exhibition at K20, Photo: Achim Kukulies

Otto Dix (1891-1969), a famous painter and notorious enfant terrible, spent the intensive creative period lasting from 1922 until 1925 in Düsseldorf. During these years, as a member of the artists group Das Junge Rheinland (Young Rhineland), he developed a painterly style that would make him an unmistakable figure within German 20th century art.

With enormous ambition and manic industry, Dix transformed himself during these three years from and expressive and veristic Dada artist to a portraitist in the style of the "Neue Sachlichkeit" (New Objectivity) who captured the likenesses of his contemporaries with unsparing precision in his works. With their sensuality and analytical incisiveness, his portraits testify to both the glamour and wretchedness of the 1920s.

Now for the first time, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen showcases this breakthrough phase of Dix’s oeuvre in a comprehensive way with more than 200 paintings, watercolors, and prints from collections in Germany and abroad.