The Skat Players by Otto Dix

About Dix

Otto Dix was born in Untermhaus, Germany. The eldest son of Franz and Louise Dix, an iron foundry worker and a seamstress who had written poetry in her youth, he was exposed to art from an early age. The hours he spent in the studio of his cousin, Fritz Amann, who was a painter, were decisive in forming young Otto's ambition to be an artist. Between 1906 and 1910, he served an apprenticeship with painter Carl Senff, and began painting his first landscapes.

When the First World War erupted, Dix enthusiastically volunteered for the German Army. He was assigned to a field artillery regiment in Dresden. In the fall of 1915 he was assigned as a non-commissioned officer of a machine-gun unit in the Western front and took part in the Battle of the Somme. In November 1917, his unit was transferred to the Eastern front until the end of hostilities with Russia, and in February 1918 he was stationed in Flanders. Back in the western front, he fought in the German Spring offensive.  In August of that year he was wounded in the neck, and shortly after he took pilot training lessons. He was discharged of service in December 1918.

Dix was profoundly affected by the sights of the war, and would later describe a recurring nightmare in which he crawled through destroyed houses. He represented his traumatic experiences in many subsequent works, The Skat Players (Card Playing War Invalids) is one of them. 

This is a very intriguing piece, it reflects the reality of war, the cripples were everywhere on the streets dragging themselves  around, living their painful lives. 

The details of the painting

 

Dix depicts the wounded and deformed heads of the soldiers. 

The soldier is holding the cards with his foot, he has no arms. The tube coming out of his ear is a listening device initially created for sailors to hear one another at the sea, but it was soon adopted for hearing impaired.

The mechanical jaw says "only genuine with the picture of the inventor" next to it there is a self portrait of Dix. 

The table legs and the prosthetic limbs tangle in a indistinguishable mess. 

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal." 

John Steinbeck