Black and white etching by Otto Dix of soldiers in gas masks during Word War I.
Otto Dix, German, 1891–1969, Shock Troops Advance under Gas, from The War, 1924, etching, aquatint and drypoint, The John R. Van Derlip Fund and Gift of funds from Alfred and Ingrid Lenz Harrison and the Regis Foundation 2005.16.1.12

Otto Dix: The War Portfolio

Otto Dix: The War Portfolio

November 16, 2024 - August 31, 2025
Gallery 315, 316
Free Exhibition

Otto Dix (1891–1969) served in the German army during World War I. For three years, he led a machine-gun unit and experienced the horror of trench warfare firsthand. When the war ended, in 1918, many of Dix’s countrymen wanted to celebrate the valor of military service and rebuild German power; others wanted to forget and move forward. Dix belonged to a smaller cohort who wanted to scrutinize how a war that raged for four years and left ten million dead could happen in the first place. In the early 1920s, Dix created a series of fifty raw etchings—published as Der Krieg (The War)—that are less an account of Dix’s wartime activity than a sequence of PTSD-induced flashbacks.

Content advisory: This exhibition contains images of suffering, death, and bodily decay.

Otto Dix, German, 1891–1969, Shock Troops Advance under Gas, from The War, 1924, etching, aquatint and drypoint, The John R. Van Derlip Fund and Gift of funds from Alfred and Ingrid Lenz Harrison and the Regis Foundation 2005.16.1.12