Martha Dix

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Martha Dix 1922, photographed by Hugo Erfurth
Martha Dix 1922, photographed by Hugo Erfurth

Martha Dix (born Lindner ; born July 19, 1895 in Cologne ; † March 6, 1985 in Sarrians , France ) was a German goldsmith and silversmith and the wife of the painter Otto Dix , who portrayed her many times between 1921 and 1933. A well-known double portrait of the couple is also included in August Sander's portfolio People of the 20th Century from 1925.

Life

Martha Lindner was born in Cologne in 1895 as the youngest of four children into a wealthy middle-class family. Her mother was Maria Juliane Lindner (née Rottluger), her father Bernhard Lindner, an insurance director. In addition to her mother tongue, she learned several foreign languages ​​(French, Italian, English and Russian) and piano. In addition to music, she was interested in fine art and design from an early age, so she attended the Cologne Sonderbund exhibition alone at the age of 17 . She is described as “self-confident, assertive and demanding” and well educated.

In 1914 she got engaged to the urologist Hans Koch, who basically would have preferred to have a relationship with her sister five years older. The couple married in 1915 while Koch was still on the war service; he returned to Düsseldorf due to an injury , where he opened his own art gallery ("Graphinett") after the war.

During this marriage with Koch, Martha gave birth to two children - the son Martin, called "Muggeli" (* 1917) and the daughter Han (n) a (* 1920), called "Hanali". A ménage à trois between Maria, Martha and Hans Koch is assumed, as the Cologne gallery owner Karl Nierendorf , who was also in love with Maria, described it in his notes.

In October 1921 Otto Dix came to Düsseldorf at the invitation of Johanna Ey and Hans Koch, where he sold the latter two works and received his first portrait commission from him. He worked in the Koch house and the result was the unflattering portrait of Dr. Hans Koch. A love affair quickly developed between Martha Koch and Otto Dix, which culminated in the fact that she went to Dresden with him for a few months before they returned to Düsseldorf. Hugo Erfurth's photographs from Dix's circle of friends in Dresden were taken during this early period.

The marriage with Koch was divorced in 1922 and she entered into her second marriage to Dix in February 1923, before their first child, daughter Nelly , was born in June 1923 . Martha Dix's sister Maria married Hans Koch and the children from his first marriage stayed with them. The two couples remained on friendly terms, Otto Dix, for example, painted picture books for Martha Dix's children from his first marriage - as well as for his own. An interview with Martha Dix from 1984 shows that the separation did not go completely free of conflicts for her.

Martha Dix proved that, despite her upper-class background, she was practical and adaptable. For example, she renovated the shared apartment and took care of the everyday things of living together. The two also enjoyed metropolitan life in the 1920s.

Otto and Martha Dix ("Jim and Mutzli") initially stayed in Düsseldorf. In autumn 1925 the family moved with their two and a half year old daughter Nelly into a representative apartment on Kaiserdamm in Berlin - Martha Dix's father had paid the rent for seven years in advance. Son Ursus was born in 1927, the youngest son Jan in 1928. From 1927 Dix held a professorship at the Dresden Art Academy , from which he was dismissed by the National Socialists in 1933.

The family first moved to Randegg Castle , which belonged to Hans Koch, and initially lived in more or less precarious circumstances, as Dix was also prohibited from exhibiting. In 1935/1936, after the death of her father, Martha Dix had her own house and studio built in Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance with her inheritance ; she herself was registered as the client. The house remained the family's center of life for decades and this is where the three children grew up. Otto Dix traveled to Dresden until 1943 and annually after 1947, where his long-time lover Käthe König and their daughter, born in 1939, lived. At the end of the war, Otto Dix was once again on duty and in French captivity; Members of French occupation troops were quartered in the house in Hemmenhofen, which Martha Dix said she was able to come to terms with. a. because she spoke French.

Their daughter Nelly died in 1953 and Martha and Otto Dix took their granddaughter Bettina to live with them. After Otto Dix's death in 1969, she adopted Bettina in 1972 and traveled with her to Thailand, Morocco and France. After having a first heart attack in 1979, Martha Dix moved to Sarrians in Provence to live with her granddaughter Bettina, from where she made further trips to Greece and Turkey.

She handed over the house in Hemmenhofen and the rights to her husband's estate to the Otto Dix Foundation, which she founded in 1983, whose shareholders were her two sons and granddaughter Bettina Dix-Pfefferkorn.

Martha Dix portrayed by Otto Dix

In the years 1921 to 1933 Otto Dix Martha portrayed Martha as often as otherwise only himself; in total it is the motif in over seventy paintings, watercolors and drawings. No other person plays such a diverse role in the artist's work as Martha Dix. Most of the pictures were taken in Düsseldorf, Dresden and Berlin, starting with portrait sketches in October 1921, when the couple just got to know each other in the Koch house, to the first representative oil painting, which shows them as a complex personality, in black fur with a red hat.

Dix's portraits show his wife in a wide variety of roles - "Sometimes she is a muse and witty companion, sometimes a sophisticated woman, sometimes a mother and family center". Sometimes her personality is the central element of the work, sometimes it takes a back seat to ornament and emphasis on the art of painting. However, he never painted them in the sexualized or erotic way we know from his other works, where he painted prostitutes and their surroundings. Two drawings from 1923, which depict “Mutzli” waking up in the morning, are the utmost eroticism that can be found in his pictures of Martha Dix. (However, he dedicates some of his more explicit works to the 1920s, such as the painting Unequal Lovers, on the birth of their son in 1927 , which shows an old, exhausted man in a sexual pose with a young, naked lover.)

Dix is ​​also present - drawing - at the birth of his children, which is unusual for the time, from which the unfinished painting Birth and Newborn Child on Hands (Ursus) emerged. This is followed by a whole series of works dealing with the theme of motherhood, children and family, including the painting The Artist's Family with clear echoes of traditional depictions of the Holy Family , albeit ironically broken. The last paintings with Martha Dix as a motif were made in 1928 ( Mrs. Martha Dix I and II); In 1927 Otto Dix had started the longstanding parallel relationship with Käthe König. A penultimate drawing, which differs greatly from the previous illustrations by Martha, Mutz sitting was created in 1933 - “distant and without illusions”. Martha Dix only reappears as a motif in a picture book from 1955 that was later created for granddaughter Bettina.

Dix painting with Martha Dix as depicted (selection)

(Drawings and preliminary studies not listed)

  • Head (Mutzli Koch). 1922, watercolor over pencil ( Zeppelin Museum , Friedrichshafen)
  • Self-portrait with wife. 1923, oil and tempera on canvas, (whereabouts unknown)
  • Portrait of Mrs. Martha Dix. 1923, oil on canvas ( Kunstmuseum Stuttgart )
  • Portrait of my wife. 1924, watercolor and tempera over black chalk (private collection)
  • Portrait of Mrs. Martha Dix. 1926, oil and tempera on wood ( Museum Ludwig, Cologne )
  • The guts. 1923, watercolor over black chalk (Otto Dix Foundation, Vaduz)
  • Mother with child. 1924, watercolor over pencil (Museum Ludwig, Cologne)
  • Mrs. Dix with Jan in her arms. 1929, oil and tempera on wood (whereabouts unknown)
  • Family of the artist. 1927, oil on wood (Städelscher Museums-Verein, Frankfurt am Main)
  • Portrait of Mrs. Martha Dix I. 1927, oil and tempera on wood (Kunstmuseum Stuttgart)
  • Portrait of Mrs. Martha Dix I. 1927, oil and tempera on wood ( Museum Folkwang , Essen)

Exhibitions

literature

  • Karin Schick: Otto Dix. Homage to Martha . Ed .: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1620-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Karin Schick: Otto Dix. Homage to Martha . Ed .: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1620-3 , p. 95-97 .
  2. ↑ German biography: Dix, Martha (married) - German biography. Retrieved December 22, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Sometimes a sophisticated woman, sometimes a loving mother. Preparations for the show "Otto Dix - Hommage à Martha" are in progress in the art museum . In: Stuttgarter Nachrichten . Stuttgart August 20, 2005, p. 18 .
  4. ^ The painter couple [Martha and Otto Dix]. Retrieved December 22, 2019 .
  5. ^ A b c Jung-Hee Kim: Images of women by Otto Dix: Reality and self-confession . LIT Verlag, Münster 1994, ISBN 3-89473-939-8 , p. 132 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ↑ Dix, Martha. In: The Faces of the German Art Archive. German Art Archive in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, accessed on December 22, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b c d Karin Schick: Otto Dix. Homage to Martha . Ed .: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1620-3 , p. 11-13 .
  8. ↑ Thorsten Halling, Friedrich Moll: The Düsseldorf urologist Dr. Hans Koch . In: Urology in the Rhineland . Springer-Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-662-44698-0 , pp. 180-183 ( online via Researchgate ).
  9. ↑ Otto Dix, biography. In: www.schloss-randegg.de. Retrieved December 27, 2019 .
  10. ↑ a b Anja Walter-Ris: 3.2.1 The “Liebesquartett” and Karl Nierendorf . In: The History of the Nierendorf Gallery Passion for Art in the Service of Modernism Berlin / New York 1920-1995 . Berlin 2003, p. 83 , doi : 10.17169 / refubium-6309 , urn : nbn: de: kobv: 188-2003002385 .
  11. ↑ The doctor and his painter. In: museenkoeln.de. Museum Ludwig, August 24, 2008, accessed on December 27, 2019 (German).
  12. ^ Karoline Hille: Life without dilution - Otto Dix and the Düsseldorf years. In: frankfurter-hefte.de. 2017, accessed December 27, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Otto Dix picture book for Hana Galerie Remmert and Barth unknown picture book. In: rheinische-art.de. 2016, accessed December 27, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Erica Reese: The painter Otto Dix - Because I know, that's how it was and not different. Film in the Bavarian radio. In: YouTube . 1984, accessed on January 18, 2020 (German, from around 6:30 a.m.).
  15. ^ Westdeutsche Zeitung : From the box of the granddaughter Dix. Retrieved December 22, 2019 .
  16. ^ Anja Walter-Ris: Karl Nierendorf, Otto Dix and the exhibition "Die Neue Sachlichkeit" in Mannheim 1925 . In: The history of the Nierendorf Gallery: Passion for Art in the Service of Modernism Berlin / New York 1920-1995 . 2003, p. 142 , doi : 10.17169 / refubium-6309 .
  17. ↑ Ursus Dix. In: staedelmuseum.de. Retrieved December 27, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Landscape stories the film: Jan Dix - The Hermit. Retrieved December 27, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Mosheh Tsukerman: Otto Dix in the Third Reich . In: History and fine arts (=  Tel Aviv yearbook for German history ). Wallstein-Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0009-1 , ISSN  0932-8408 , p. 163 .
  20. ↑ Sucks. In: deutschlandfunkkultur.de. Accessed December 23, 2019 (German).
  21. ↑ a b c d Karin Schick: Otto Dix. Homage to Martha . Ed .: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1620-3 , p. 85-88 .
  22. ↑ The Höri as a place of refuge for Otto Dix and other artists. In: Monuments Online. Retrieved December 28, 2019 .
  23. ↑ Johannes Stoffler: A biographical garden. The garden of the Dix family in Hemmenhofen . In: Annemarie Bucher, Swiss Society for Garden Culture (ed.): Garden biographies: tell places . tape 2014 . Vdf Hochschulverlag, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-7281-3579-7 , p. 44–52 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  24. ↑ Patrick Bauer: Werk und Wahn . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin . Munich November 18, 2016 ( online via reporter-forum.de [PDF]).
  25. ↑ a b Karin Schick: Otto Dix. Homage to Martha . Ed .: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1620-3 , p. 44-46 .
  26. ↑ Petra Mostbacher-Dix: From Martha the dance shoes, from Max the wristwatch . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . Stuttgart August 22, 2005, p. 12 .
  27. ↑ Karin Schick: Otto Dix. Homage to Martha . Ed .: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1620-3 , p. 64 .
  28. ↑ Karin Schick: Otto Dix. Homage to Martha . Ed .: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1620-3 , p. 100-104 .
  29. ↑ PICTURE: Dix and the women . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . Stuttgart March 25, 2010, p. 29 .
personal data
SURNAME Dix, Martha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koch, Martha (first married name); Lindner, Martha (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German gold and silversmith and wife of Otto Dix
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1985
Place of death Sarrians