Thursday, June 6, 2019

On the Trail of Otto Dix: A visit to the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden


The next stop on my journey to learn more about Otto Dix was the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, where Dix taught master student Gussy Hippold-Ahnert and many others. He was a well-loved professor, who worked along side his students to encourage their proficiency in Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, a popular style that Dix developed and perfected in the mid-twenties. At the Academy, I paged through archival model records to look for the name of the woman who modeled for "The Pregnant Woman" (1931), the piece that inspired my upcoming exhibition, With Child: Otto Dix / Carmen Winant.
Marcia Lagerwey searches through documents related to Otto Dix's time at the Academy
Marcia Lagerwey searches through documents
related to Otto Dix's time at the Academy. 
Although I was unable to identify the pregnant model with certainty, my hours in the archive were far from fruitless.  Highlights included the discovery of another photograph of Dix in his studio with his students and the pregnant model, showing more of the model than the MFA photo by Erfurth (which will be included in the exhibition); finding out that Gussy Hippold-Ahnert and other students also modeled for each other; and perhaps, most stunningly, seeing the actual letter to Dix outlining his firing from the Academy by the National Socialists, or Nazis, in April, 1933.

The Nude Room, where students work with nude models and study anatomy, today as in Dix's day.
The Nude Room, where students work with nude models
and study anatomy, today and in Dix's day.
Next, I visited the nude room where Dix and his students likely would have worked with the pregnant model, creating drawings that would become the inspiration for Dix’s and Hippold-Ahnert’s paintings, both to be included in the exhibition this fall. Walking through the halls of this prestigious Academy, that still carried on in much the same way as it had during Dix’s tenure there 86 years ago, I felt the presence of this master painter, Dix, its most famous artist. I couldn’t take enough pictures of the towering dome with its dancing gold angel, Fama, the Roman goddess of fame, enticing Dix and his students to ever greater expressive heights.

Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany (exterior)
Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany
Marcia Lagerwey, Guest Curator of With Child: Otto Dix / Carmen Winant (Sept 21 to Dec 15, 2019)
Dresden, Germany
Sunday, May 26 (posted June 4, 2019)