Bombs, caves, corpses, blood

Otto Dix

1891-1969

"1914-1918 Enlists voluntarily for military service in field artillery in Dresden."

"Dix experienced the war on the frontmost lines. [...] If one reads his observations on those years and compares the statements recorded 'on site' in his 'war journal' with those written from memory forty years later, one is struck by the uniform tenor. [...]
'I had to see it all for myself. I am such a realist, you know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in order to confirm that that's the way it is.' Even as a young man, Dix was candid about himself as well as toward others, as one can see from the entries in his diary in 1915 and 1916: 'Lice, rats, barbed wire entanglements, fleas, grenades, bombs, caves, corpses, blood, schnaps, mice, cats, gases, cannons, filth, bullets, machine-guns, fire, steel, that's what war is! Nothing but the devil's work!'"

Eva Karcher
Otto Dix, Taschen 2012
English translation:
Doris Linda Jones and Jeremy Gaines