Letters, Vol. 1

Letters, Vol. 1 is the first volume of the English translation of the correspondence of the German painter Otto Dix (1891–1969), published by Contra Mundum Press in 2016 and the opening installment of a planned three-volume edition. Dix is regarded as one of the most important German artists of the twentieth century, and his work confronts the reality he lived through without embellishment: his early works depict the brutality of the battlefields and trenches of the First World War, as well as the decadent underworld of 1920s Berlin. The letters selected for this volume were written between 1904 and 1927, and its core is a group of postcards Dix sent from the front lines of the First World War to his Dresden secondary-school friend Helene Jakob; together with their sketches, these texts amount to a kind of artistic reportage of singular power. The same body of letters also covers his involvement with Dada in Dresden in 1919 and his subsequent absorption into the Secessionist circles, as well as his meeting with his future wife Martha after completing his first portrait commission in Düsseldorf in 1922—Martha being one of the volume's most important correspondents. The recipients range from family and friends to other artists, collectors, colleagues, critics, and biographers, revealing a multifaceted man: a painter who often appeared coarse and unapproachable to the outside world, yet who wrote the most romantic and tender letters to his wife and drew comic cartoons for his daughter. For the study of art history, Expressionism, and Dix himself, these letters offer first-hand material for entering his life and work.