Otto Dix
Zigeunerkind mit Ziege
1949
Oil on fibreboard 81 x 65 cm Framed. Artist's mark and dated '49' in blue green lower right. Verso additionally with artist's mark, dated, and titled 'Zigeunerkind mit Ziege'. - Upper right corner somewhat bumped with partial loss of colour. Partial frame-related rubbing along edges.
In 1936 Otto Dix relocated permanently to Hemmenhofen by Lake Constance, where he and his family moved into a house of their own. The country life that surrounded Dix in Hemmenhofen can also be found in the body of work he created after the end of the war, in the form of rustic still lifes of flowers and crops and in views of landscapes featuring fields and pastures. He created portraits of the people and animals of this region, sometimes also together, as in the case of the 1949 painting “Mädchen mit Hühnern” (Löffler 1949/22). The likeness of a girl with her goat presented here dates to the same year - Dix has used this seemingly trivial motif as the occasion for an unconventional, expressive composition.
The girl confronts the viewer with a sceptical look, pressing herself against the animal in search of protection. And the goat, with its lowered horns and the raised fur on its back, actually does seem ready to attack; its exposed teeth and aggressive gaze provide it with a wily facial expression that seems directly human. The artist also plays with dissonances in terms of colour. The violet and green tones of the child's dress extend into the parts of her legs and upper body that are in shadow as well as the goat's horns and the shadows in its fur.
The paintings “Zigeunerkind mit Ziege” and “Hahn und Hühner”, also by Otto Dix (see lot 158), are from what was formerly the collection of Heinz Pachen (1922-2006), from which we will be offering 16 other select works in our auction no. 1163 on 9 December 2020. With great passion and limited financial means, Heinz Pachen built up a collection comprising around 4000 works of modern and contemporary art together with his wife Hella. First exhibited as a long-term loan in the Mittelrheinmuseum in Mainz, the artworks were transferred to a collector's museum of their own in the town of Rockenhausen, in Rhineland-Palatinate, in 1996. It is not least the sculptural pieces offered here, with works by Emy Roeder (lots 462 and 464), Renée Sintenis (lot 480) and Bernhard Heiliger (lot 382), which demonstrate the exceptional quality of the collection.
Catalogue Raisonné
Löffler 1949/4
Provenance
Sammlung Pachen, Mainz/Rockenhausen
Literature
Hans Hofstätter, Sammlung Pachen. Deutsche Kunstwerke aus dem 20. Jahrhundert. Malerei, Graphik, Plastik, Mainz 1960, p. 18 with colour illus. p. 19
Exhibitions
Mainz 1962 (Gemäldegalerie), Sammlung Pachen. Gemälde - Graphik - Plastik, cat. no. 19 with illus.; Mainz 1978 (Mittelrheinisches Landesmuseum), Sammlung Pachen. Eine Auswahl, cat. no. 16