Dix and the Present

The Deichtorhallen Hamburg is presenting a major exhibition in this book for fall 2023 on Otto Dix and his influence on art extending up to the present. The first part of the two-part exhibition presents Dix's supposedly non-political work from the Nazi era, in which the artistic effects of political censorship, conformity, opposition, and political iconography become evident. Until now, Otto Dix's work during the Nazi era has occupied a secondary position in the exhibition and research landscape. In order to cover Dix's landscapes, portraits, and Christian subjects in the context of his time, the book places the painter, his work, and his professional career in the artistic and political context of the Weimar Republic, Nazism, and the period just after the end of the war. The second part of the exhibition and the book focuses on the artistic reception of Dix in relation to subject matter, political iconography, style, technique, and genre. The show makes visible the changes in cultural and social conditions in the reception of Dix's oeuvre, and also shows the great fascination that his work has exerted for around 40 of the most well-known contemporary artists around the world.
About the Author: Ina Jessen studied at the Department of Art History at the University of Hamburg between 2007 and 2013, where she received her doctorate in 2019 with her dissertation on Otto Dix and National Socialism. From 2012 to 2015 she was curator of the Dieter Roth Museum, Hamburg and also served from 2013 to 2016 as a research assistant for Franç oise Forster-Hahn at University of California, Riverside. Since 2015, Ina Jessen has also held teaching positions on topics related to Dieter Roth, Otto Dix, and political iconography, and provenance research. Birgit Schwarz is a lecturer at the University of Vienna at the Institute for Art History. In her area of specialization, German and Austrian painting in the 20th century, she has done in-depth scholarly work in the field of provenance research for the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, among others. She was a scholarly advisor on the topic of Gurlitt and the Nazi art theft, has conducted research in particular on Hitler's art theft and museum policy in Austria, and is considered a specialist on the topic of Otto Dix and the Nazi art theft. Dirk Luckow born 1958, has been the General Director of the Deichtorhallen Hamburg since 2009. He graduated 1996 with a dissertation on Joseph Beuys and the American Anti-Form-Art. Luckow has since worked at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dü sseldorf, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Wü rttembergische Kunstverein in Stuttgart. He also worked as project manager for visual arts at the Siemens Arts Program in Munich, before he became Director of the Kunsthalle zu Kiel from 2002 to 2009. Since 2016 he is an honorary professor at Hochschule fü r bildende Kü nste. Ina Jessen studied at the Department of Art History at the University of Hamburg between 2007 and 2013, where she received her doctorate in 2019 with her dissertation on Otto Dix and National Socialism. From 2012 to 2015 she was curator of the Dieter Roth Museum, Hamburg and also served from 2013 to 2016 as a research assistant for Franç oise Forster-Hahn at University of California, Riverside. Since 2015, Ina Jessen has also held teaching positions on topics related to Dieter Roth, Otto Dix, and political iconography, and provenance research. Gitta Ho received her PhD from the University of Hamburg. She was a research associate at the TU Berlin and the Université Franç ois-Rabelais, Tours, and a fellow at the German Forum for Art History, Paris. She worked on Franco-German art relations from 1800 to the present. She also worked on the subject of Nazi looted art in France and on George Grosz and his pictorial works created in France. Starr Figura is Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. She joined the Museum in 1993. In 2011, she organized the exhibition German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse, which marked the culmination of a major grant-funded project that she supervised to digitize, catalogue, and conserve the Museum's collection of more than 3,800 Expressionist works on paper, all of which are now searchable on an extensive subsite on the MoMA website. In 2007, she organized Lucian Freud: The Painter's Etchings.