Otto Dix
Leda1919

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Vertical oil painting with fragmented, Cubist-style figures in crimson, white, and green, with interlocking limbs and a Cyrillic signature along the right edge

Artist or Maker: Otto Dix
Germany, 1891-1969
Title: Leda
Place Made: Germany
Date Made: 1919
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 40 13/16 × 31 13/16 in. (103.66 × 80.8 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Charles K. Feldman, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Best, and B. Gerald Cantor
Accession Number: 85.3
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: Otto Dix volunteered for the German army and served for three years during World War I on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, where he experienced first-hand the conflict’s unprecedented violence and destruction. On his return to Germany, Dix became actively involved with the most radical artists’ groups, first the Dresden Secessionists, and then Dada in Berlin. This painting was made only one year after the war’s end as Germany was in the throes of revolutionary fighting following the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the establishment of the democratic Weimar Republic (1919–33). The kinetic energy of Dix’s composition is marshalled to express the savagery of Leda’s rape by the swan—the animal avatar of the Greek god Zeus—pointing to the violence at the heart of classical Western culture.

Wall label, 2021.
Provenance: The artist (1891-1969). Fritz Glaser, (1876-1956) Dresden, until the 1930s. Felix Peltzer, Stolberg (1896-1983); [by 1962 sold to Marlborough Gallery, London]; sold in 1985 to LACMA.
Selected Bibliography: Powell III, Earl A., Robert Winter, and Stephanie Barron. The Robert O. Anderson Building. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986.
Löffler, Fritz. Otto Dix, 1891-1969: Œuvre der Gemälde. Recklinghausen: Verlag Aurel Bongers, 1981

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