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.
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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.
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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.
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| Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany |
Dresden, Germany
Sunday, May 26 (posted June 4, 2019)
