Streichholzhändler II

In »The Match Seller II«, we are confronted by a poorly clothed young boy offering his goods for sale. He looks at us directly, as if we are city pedestrians. Every detail of his haggard figure points to the poverty that forces him to sell matches. In this painting Otto Dix takes a merciless look at the underbelly of metropolitan life in the so-called Golden Twenties. By depicting the young boy full-frame and thus emphasizing his impoverished appearance rather than embellishing it, Dix demands compassion while simultaneously indicting his condition.

In other works from this period, Dix also drew an uncompromising portrait of society—for example in his »Metropolis Triptych« (1927/28), where the world of jazz, dance, and amusement directly confronts disfigured World War I veterans, prostitution, and violence. Some of his works paint a sober picture of the postwar reality of the Weimar Republic, while others exaggerate it to the point of being grotesque. This earned him quick recognition as one of the most important artists of New Objectivity. With his old master painting technique and realistic representation, he relentlessly exposed the conditions and conflicts of his time.