Otto Dix. DER KRIEG (“WAR“) The Dresden Triptych

The year 2014 will see the centenary of the start of the First World War. No other 20th-century artist dealt as intensively or as strongly with the First World War than Otto Dix (1891--1969). His shockingly realistic depictions of wounded and dead soldiers in the trenches have been imprinted in our collective memory. The huge triptych “Der Krieg“ (“War“, 1929--1932), hanging in the Galerie Neue Meister, is one of the key works of German realist painting from the 20th century. In the style of an Old Master, the four panels reveal the “great seminal catastrophe of the 20th century“, showing troops setting off at daybreak (left panel), the battlefield as a place of death (central panel), soldiers returning from the hell of battle (right panel) and fallen soldiers resting in peace in a dugout (predella). More information: