Otto Dix
The Card Players1920

Not on view

Etching of three grotesque, distorted figures with exaggerated features playing cards around a small ornate table, rendered in dense crosshatching on cream paper

Artist or Maker: Otto Dix
Germany, 1891-1969
Title: The Card Players
Date Made: 1920
Medium: Drypoint
Dimensions: Image: 12 7/8 × 11 3/16 in. (32.7 × 28.42 cm) Sheet: 20 1/8 × 16 3/4 in. (51.12 × 42.56 cm) Frame: 25 5/8 × 23 5/8 × 1 1/4 in. (65.09 × 60.01 × 3.18 cm)
Credit Line: The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, puchased with funds provided by the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation, Beverly Hills, CA, and Helgard Field-Lion and Irwin Field
Accession Number: M.2015.15
Classification: Prints
Collecting Area: Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies
Curatorial Notes: Otto Dix’s print The Card Players (Kartenspieler) marks a crucial progression toward the unflinching (if not grotesque) realistic style that became a mainstay of the New Objectivity of the 1920s. Influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and having developed an artistic style that combined a vivacious Expressionism with Futurism’s emphasis on movement and simultaneity, Dix volunteered enthusiastically for military service. He later commented: “War was something horrible, but nonetheless something powerful. . . . Under no circumstances could I miss it! It is necessary to see people in this unchained condition in order to know something about man.”

Serving in artillery and machine-gun units, Dix witnessed some of the war’s bloodiest battles, including the Somme, where more than one million men were killed or injured. Sickened by the horror and violence, he sought new means to express what he had seen. His gruesome scenes of war and revolution often depicted drastically disfigured combat casualties. Here, his biting criticism is inspired in part by his study of The Beggars (1568), a painting of crippled paupers by Flemish Renaissance master Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Dix had made an earlier version of The Card Players (Nationalgalerie, Berlin) in a mixed-media style that fused painting and collage. In the print, however, he honed his composition to perfection, omitting the superfluous details of the collage painting to focus on the deformed figures who exert themselves with great determination to carry out a seemingly leisurely pastime.

Timothy Benson

2017
Selected Bibliography: Barron, Stephanie, and Sabine Eckmann. New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919–1933. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2015.

Benson, Timothy O. and Andrea Gyorody. A New Generation of Creators: Selections from The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017.
Benson, Timothy O. Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023.
Copyright: © Otto Dix Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Otto Dix
The Card Players1920

Not on view

Artist or Maker: Otto Dix
Germany, 1891-1969
Title: The Card Players
Date Made: 1920
Medium: Drypoint
Dimensions: Image: 12 7/8 × 11 3/16 in. (32.7 × 28.42 cm) Sheet: 20 1/8 × 16 3/4 in. (51.12 × 42.56 cm) Frame: 25 5/8 × 23 5/8 × 1 1/4 in. (65.09 × 60.01 × 3.18 cm)
Credit Line: The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, puchased with funds provided by the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation, Beverly Hills, CA, and Helgard Field-Lion and Irwin Field
Accession Number: M.2015.15
Classification: Prints
Collecting Area: Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies
Curatorial Notes: Otto Dix’s print The Card Players (Kartenspieler) marks a crucial progression toward the unflinching (if not grotesque) realistic style that became a mainstay of the New Objectivity of the 1920s. Influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and having developed an artistic style that combined a vivacious Expressionism with Futurism’s emphasis on movement and simultaneity, Dix volunteered enthusiastically for military service. He later commented: “War was something horrible, but nonetheless something powerful. . . . Under no circumstances could I miss it! It is necessary to see people in this unchained condition in order to know something about man.”

Serving in artillery and machine-gun units, Dix witnessed some of the war’s bloodiest battles, including the Somme, where more than one million men were killed or injured. Sickened by the horror and violence, he sought new means to express what he had seen. His gruesome scenes of war and revolution often depicted drastically disfigured combat casualties. Here, his biting criticism is inspired in part by his study of The Beggars (1568), a painting of crippled paupers by Flemish Renaissance master Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Dix had made an earlier version of The Card Players (Nationalgalerie, Berlin) in a mixed-media style that fused painting and collage. In the print, however, he honed his composition to perfection, omitting the superfluous details of the collage painting to focus on the deformed figures who exert themselves with great determination to carry out a seemingly leisurely pastime.

Timothy Benson

2017
Selected Bibliography: Barron, Stephanie, and Sabine Eckmann. New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919–1933. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2015.

Benson, Timothy O. and Andrea Gyorody. A New Generation of Creators: Selections from The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017.
Benson, Timothy O. Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023.