The painting shows an extravagant lady, who represents her superiority, exclusivity and noblesse in her expressive gesture and habitus. She is heavily made up, with green eye shadow and long eyelashes, prominent eyebrows and pink lips. Her black hair is carefully pinned up and in a towering back-do in true 1960s style. The wide-cut purple strap dress with lace trim reveals her collarbones and her slender, just-bony arm. The details of her physiognomy are depicted abstractly and on reduced to essential basic features. Significant for the compositional design are her critically lowered gaze on the long, pink manicured fingernails, as well as the graceful posture of her hands and the spreading of the fingers. The lady does not give the viewer a single glance.
The coloration in which the portrait of the lady is held goes on over the entire object , so Dix colors the surroundings, the space and background of the portrait likewise in sharply formed pink-purple, green-turquoise and black color areas, as if he would capture thereby the aura of the lady.
The human being in exceptional situations
If one wants to classify the portrait of the "Moonlike Lady" in the work of the artist, it is it essential to disregard the war in the process not . The war has shaped the painter Otto Dix deeply, so that he himself explains: "I have studied the war carefully. It has to be portrayed realistically so that it can be understood. I don't think anyone else has how me seen the reality of war so : The privations, the wounds, the suffering". It is precisely this horror that artist knows how to document in his works, in order to better grasp the human being in its comprehensive totality.
According to his philosophy, which is based on Friedrich Nietzsche and his own Christian view, you have to experience people in exceptional situations in order to be able to understand them completely and and thus also to depict them. The artist and adheres to this manifesto and develops its own style, which is permeated by it.
So you are, so is life and you are so interesting, so valuable, so worth painting, that you are painted!
Otto Dix
His first works are created on the battlefield. In World War I, the young Dix himself is in the trenches and must fire the machine gun at the front. Death, injury, pain are his environment for years, which he observingly takes into his initial works to be able to process even these catastrophic circumstances. He begins his artistic-crafts apprenticeship before the war at the School of Arts and Crafts in Dresden and and continues it after the war at the Academy. During this time, the artist was also occupied with the currents of his time, abstraction, but he quickly turned his back on it and and instead continued to develop his own formal language.
From Düsseldorf to Berlin: revealing the human psyche in his portraits
Through this and the move to Düsseldorf, the then place of the Young Rhineland, he receives support from Johanna Ey, a luminary of this art scene. Otto Dix enrolls in the art academy and can record sales and accept first commissions. At this time, he creates portraits that bring attention to painter . Likewise, he hits a nerve of society in his free independent works: he shows life how it is, characters, hidden, beautiful and ugly, youth and age in all its facets.
To do this, he brings the viewer close and reveals vices and fears of people. Hidden urges of the human psyche are shown in the following years in the whole nakedness. Himself explains Dix to it: "it is necessary, that one gives to them the bitter pill and says: Now look at! So are you, so is the life and you are so interesting, so valuable, so worth painting, that you are painted!"
Often his works deal with contradictions of society, which tries to suppress a past of war and dares to paint over itself with lustful pleasures. Especially in Berlin, the great city to which it draws him and to offer him a variety of motifs. His own war experiences continue to be groundbreaking in his art. So opens up to the artist the style of New Objectivity and forms his works the mirror of his time.
The 1920s feature extreme figures on, prostitution, stage, theater, dance and are full of lust, until the works of the artist was banned for immorality. By the Nazis was Otto Dix , as one of the first artist, ostracized. He lost his professorship at the art academy in Dresden and had to accept how his property was partly forcibly auctioned. on the propaganda exhibition "Degenerate Art", many of his works were shown. Otto Dix was considered an indecent military saboteur and was consequently not allowed to exhibit more. In 1939 artist was temporarily imprisoned by the Gestapo. In 1945 he became a French prisoner of war, but was allowed to continue working as artist .
The art of change: Otto Dix and the post-war years
The post-war years are for the artist disillusioning, but he continues to paint and until in his late work he opens up to Expressionism, which includes the portrait of the "Moonlike Lady". In 1965 Otto Dix paints the painting described at the beginning, which is labeled "Mrs. Heiss, née Fischer". Characteristics of this style, how the coarse brushstroke, the color violence and the pointed forms, the artist combines in his portrait of the "Mondänen Dame" just as how his self-acquired means of design, which emerged from his career.
In the documentary of the German-French channel arte, the painting of the Moon Lady is shown standing in his studio in Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance. There Otto Dix found his new home and that of his paintings.
The "Mondäne Dame" is stylistically related to his Roman portraits, especially those from the early 1960s. Both from the painting style, as well as the motif and of the Morbidezza, the "Mondäne Dame" (1965/3) is to be connected with the "La Contessa" (1962/3) and the "Römerin im Blauen Kleid" (1962/4), all of which can be taken from the catalogue of works of the artist. In his last creative years Dix received numerous honors, including in 1959 Bundesverdienstkreuz and 1966 the honorary citizenship of the city of Gera.
Hall auction with Otto Dix in the December
We are pleased to present in our great Hall auction in December 2023 the portrait of the 'Moon Lady', which combines the entire career of the artist!
If also you want your works of art, watches, jewelry from our house estimate, so simply contact us, our experts advise you gladly, free and without obligation.
- Phone: +49 (0)208 - 305 90 81
- Email: info@wettmann.com
- WhatsApp: +49 (0)1520 - 493 58 35
- All other information about Consign & auction
