Otto Dix

A major and rare loan of 19 prints from the Department of Prints & Drawings at the British Museum as a stand-alone display.

Commemorating the centenary of WW1, which began with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand on June 28 1914, the exhibition will present a selection from the series Der Krieg (The War) 1924.

Made ten years after the beginning of WW1, presumably because it was only then that Dix could return to the experiences that he went through in the trenches, the prints were ground-breaking: through the impact of the images that Dix conjured, and also in the unique combination of multiple print-making techniques that he employed.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they regarded Dix as a degenerate artist and had him sacked from his post as an art teacher at the Dresden Academy. Dix, like all other practicing artists, was forced to join the Nazi government's Reich Chamber of Fine Arts (Reichskammer der bildenden Kuenste), a subdivision of Goebbels' Cultural Ministry (Reichskulturkammer). Membership was mandatory for all artists in the Reich. Dix had to promise to paint only inoffensive landscapes. He still painted an occasional allegorical painting that criticized Nazi ideals.