Professor to explore post-WWI German art, painter Otto Dix

Among the first to feel the war’s impact of World War I were the German artists who confronted its tragedies firsthand and who returned to civilian life determined to channel their collective trauma into new forms of expression. Some sought refuge in abstraction. Others embarked on a withering, angry critique of Weimar Germany and the social unrest, cynicism and desperation that would provide fertile ground for National Socialism.

Dick Ringler, professor emeritus of English and Scandinavian studies, will examine the case of Otto Dix, who served in the German army late in the war. Dix, with George Grosz, returned to build a body of work that pointed an accusatory finger at industrialists, the military and those who capitalized on the madness of Germany’s inter-war period.

Ringler will present “What Should an Artist do When his Country Goes Mad? The Case of the German Painter Otto Dix” at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 6, in the Elvehjem Museum of Art, room L140. The lecture is a repeat of an earlier Center for the Humanities program.

Information: http://www.humanities.wisc.edu, 263-3409.