Grave, 1917
ArtistOtto Dix,
Gera
1891–1969
Singen
Charcoal
Sheet dimensions40 × 40,3 cm
Status
not on displayProvenancePost-Inventory 1949
Inventory numberK 1949-183
Contact
sammlung@kunstpalast.de
About the workWhen Otto Dix was in his twenties, he volunteered to serve in the First World War. In this drawing he captured the unrelenting brutality of the war, which took the lives and futures of countless troops. The soldier depicted here has remained unburied in the battlefield. His body merges with the landscape; flowers sprout on his corpse. Field crops growing over the bodies of the deceased – a symbol of the cycle of birth and death – have been present in German art since the late eighteenth century as a response to the experiences of war.
ProvenancePost-Inventory 1949