Lot 285 D

With this full-face half-figure nude, Otto Dix presents himself at the height of his graphic mastery. The gaze of the model is focused on the viewer - the portrait takes on its formidable presence through the directness of the depiction and through her charisma. Here, the approach based on realism and the New Objectivity is additionally invested with something vividly unsettling and individual through the specific characterisation of the head. This sheet nonetheless reveals a stylistic transformation that took place in those years. “Between 1923 and 1925 in Düsseldorf and Berlin, but above all from 1927 onwards in his second Dresden period, Dix's graphic art matured. The nudes become more neutral, and they emphasise the haptic and the tactile: Dix invests more effort in modelling and 'forming'. This evidently takes place at the expense of the barbaresque 'désinvolture', which characterises his drawings from the early twenties and is considered by some to be the specific identifying feature of Dix's work in general. Dix no longer needed these aggressive means and he richly compensated for what he had eliminated in terms of incisiveness through a convincing confidence, through dynamism and abundance.” (Dämonie des Weiblichen: Aktzeichnungen 1919-1933, in: Otto Conzelmann (ed.), Otto Dix, Handzeichnungen, Hanover 1968, p. 42).