On the trail of Otto Dix, there are exceptional people
still forging on in the spirit of Dix himself, with his creative, painterly commitment
to life in its manifestations: both its acute suffering and sensuality. Andrea
Dix, the spouse of Jan Dix (Otto Dix’s youngest son, who died in January), is
one of these people. She hosted me recently in her Bed and Breakfast, where she
lived and worked with Jan, a stone's throw from Lake Constance, Germany, where
I also visited the Museum Haus Dix.
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Andrea Dix and Marcia Lagerwey (right)
stand at the doorway to Andrea's Bread and Breakfast home. |
There, Dix and his family resettled
after he was fired by the National Socialists from his teaching post at the Art
Academy in Dresden and fled into inner emigration, still in Germany but close
to Switzerland in case he needed to leave quickly. In Hemmenhoffen, he lived
and worked, very isolated from the city that he loved, Dresden, and stranded in
the natural world. “I feel like a cow in front of nature,” he said. But there,
in that luscious landscape, he continued to work daily, his vision changing
slowly to include landscape, while he raised his family and kept a low
profile. He was not permitted by the National
Socialists to paint portraits that showed the underside of society at that
time, but he managed to continue here and there to paint what he saw, a hard,
dark vision of Germany in the thirties and forties.
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| Otto Dix's studio in the Museum Haus Dix. |
As an artist, Andrea still works, as her husband Jan
worked, to create exquisite jewelry, and, as it soon became clear to me, to
carry forward the story of Jan’s father Otto Dix and his censored attempts to
“create meaning for our times,” to be a witness, to show both ugliness and
beauty, often side-by-side in the same image. Andrea’s human stories told while
paging through photo albums over breakfast revealed a creative, dynamic family.
I began to see Otto Dix in a new light, to understand better how he saw
everything and had the courage to depict what he saw. This vision and a silver ring
made by his son—a fertile female crescent—connected me to this family spirit
and perhaps gave me a bit more courage to live fully myself.
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Marcia Lagerwey and Andrea Dix (right)
explore photo albums of the Dix family. |
Marcia Lagerwey, Guest Curator of
With Child: Otto Dix / Carmen Winant (Sept 21 — Dec 15, 2019)
Oeningen, Germany
Saturday, May 18, 2019 (Posted May 22)
