Wounded Soldier is a piece of artwork by Otto Dix, a German painter and printer who lived from 1891 to 1969(Otto Dix). Dix served during the First World War while fighting for the German Army(Simkin). It was there that he experienced the true horrors of war, greatly influencing his art and enabling him to produce emotionally moving pieces of artwork eventually recognized as “perhaps the most powerful as well as the most unpleasant anti-war statements in modern art.”(Henshaw) His most famous works can be found in his collection of etchings, Der Krieg: an extensive collection of artwork completed in 1924 consisting of fifty prints separated into five sections, all portraying the traumatic experiences of war(Otto Dix) . This collection of works widely influenced some of the major artists of the twentieth century such as Pablo Picasso and Ben Shahn(Henshaw). After the war, Dix continued his art, focusing primarily on religious allegories and “depictions of post-war suffering.” (Otto Dix)
The style of Dix’s Wounded Soldier follows the theme of death and devastation as found in another one of Dix’s most influential works, Trench Warfare, completed in 1932(Simkin), showing the nightmarish illustration of the war trenches festering with disease, plagued by the stench of decomposing corpses and immersed in the filth and blood of war. Similarly, Wounded Soldier, an aquatint etching of the Der Krieg collection, completed in 1916(Otto Dix), focuses on the experiences of war as it demonstrates Dix’s encounter with a man, shot from a bullet, falling over dead beside him. It implements an unrefined color pallet of monotone white, black, and grey, providing a solemn atmosphere and drawing attention towards the “bleaker side of life, unsparingly depicting…violence, old age, and death.”(Otto Dix) The defeated, disfigured soldier is an extensive depiction of the repulsive, decaying condition of man, demonstrating not only the damage and disfigurement of the physical aspects of war, but also of the psychological. In Dix’s Wounded Soldier, we are provided with a horrifying, barefaced depiction of war, representing the very decadence of humanity. It is through this portrayal of human decadence that this artwork pertains to the prevailing theme of the destruction of war throughout history.
