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Lot Essay
Hegauberge mit Getreidefelder und Hohentwiel is one of the last of the series of landscape paintings that Dix painted during the Third Reich. Dismissed from his teaching post at the Dresden Academy in 1933, and declared a Degenerate Artist, Dix insisted on remaining in Germany in spite of the dangers of doing so. Finding it prudent to leave Dresden, where the Minister-President of Saxony had written in surprise on Dix's personal dossier "Is the swine still alive then?" Dix and his family settled in Randegg, Hegau in the rural south-west of the country. Here amidst the spectacular scenery of the Bodensee, Dix was, as he put it, "banished into landscape".
For the next twelve years landscapes formed the subject matter of the vast majority of Dix's oeuvre. Dix began to paint in Hegau under the tutelage of his friend Franz Lenk, but increasingly his landscapes grew to reflect the influence of the Old Masters, in particular the work of Breughel and of Caspar David Friedrich. Dix often borrowed from Breughel's sweeping use of composition as seen from a high vantage point, and his obsession with details is another element that his landscape paintings share with those of the great Flemish master.
Throughout these years Dix repeatedly painted the spectacular Hegau landscape with its distant mountains and turbulent skies. None of these paintings were painted en plein air however. Dix would make studies from nature in the landsape and then work up the finished painting his studio, in many cases using the atmosphere and mood of the landscape as an allegory for the political climate of the times.
For the next twelve years landscapes formed the subject matter of the vast majority of Dix's oeuvre. Dix began to paint in Hegau under the tutelage of his friend Franz Lenk, but increasingly his landscapes grew to reflect the influence of the Old Masters, in particular the work of Breughel and of Caspar David Friedrich. Dix often borrowed from Breughel's sweeping use of composition as seen from a high vantage point, and his obsession with details is another element that his landscape paintings share with those of the great Flemish master.
Throughout these years Dix repeatedly painted the spectacular Hegau landscape with its distant mountains and turbulent skies. None of these paintings were painted en plein air however. Dix would make studies from nature in the landsape and then work up the finished painting his studio, in many cases using the atmosphere and mood of the landscape as an allegory for the political climate of the times.