Die Irrsinnige

In this painting, Otto Dix captures the figure of the lunatic in grotesque exaggeration. She wears an open dress whose stripes are reminiscent of institutional clothing, under which a haggard breast can be seen, while her contorted face with the insane gaze and the cramped hands provide further indications of her state of inner turmoil. Nightmarish faces rise above her head, visions of a mentally ill person no longer able to distinguish between dream and reality.

Otto Dix openly embraces both his figure’s ugliness and marginal status. As the main representative of the left wing of New Objectivity with its political stance and critical questioning of the conditions of the Weimar Republic, social outsiders such as prostitutes, criminals, or the ill play an important role in Dix’s work. They reveal to him a detail of reality which he depicted time and again without embellishment. “I need the connection to the sensory world, the courage to embrace ugliness, undiluted life,” he explained.