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AUGUST SANDER (German, 1876-1964) PORTRAIT OF OTTO DIX signed and dated “Sander 1924” in pencil b...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:25,000.00 - 35,000.00 USD
AUGUST SANDER (German, 1876-1964) PORTRAIT OF OTTO DIX signed and dated “Sander 1924” in pencil b...
AUGUST SANDER
(German, 1876-1964)
PORTRAIT OF OTTO DIX
signed and dated “Sander 1924” in pencil below image lower right on recto
artist blindstamp lower left on recto
gelatin silver print on original vellum
9 x 63?4 in. (23 x 17 cm)
1924
ESTIMATE: $25,000-35,000
PROVENANCE
The August Sander Archive, COLOGNE
Private Collection, COLOGNE
LITERATURE
August Sander, PEOPLE OF THE 20TH CENTURY, V THE ARTISTS, NEW YORK, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2002,
p. 123 (illustrated)
August Sander’s portraits document the social strata of Germany in the years before World War II. Sander depicted artists, intellectuals, bureaucrats, merchants, laborers and soldiers with the intention to “make natural portraits that show the subjects in an environment corresponding to their own individuality.” In his Portrait of Otto Dix, Sander captures the German painter who pioneered the New Objectivity movement, a sobering reaction to the horrors of World War I. This photograph is an especially interesting example of Sander’s portraiture because of the correlations between Sander’s and Dix’s artistic endeavors.
Both artists embodied the principal characteristics of New Objectivity: faithful recording of the subject, in-depth perspective, isolation of details and emphasis on the character of the sitter. In fact, an interesting parallel may be drawn between this photograph and Dix’s own Self Portrait, painted two years later (fig. 1). Like Sander, Dix consistently sought out subjects whose personalities exemplified the times in which they lived. Dix’s most notorious sitter, the journalist Sylvia von Harden, described an interaction she once had with him: “I must paint you!” Dix told her. “I simply must…you are representative of an entire epoch” (Sergiusz Michalski, NEW OBJECTIVITY, Cologne, Taschen 1994, p. 53).
This portrait demonstrates remarkably the effectiveness of the way New Objectivity guided Sander’s artistic choices. Sander’s influence on later artists is far-reaching and may even be detected in the contemporary work of Bernd and Hilla Becher and their school. His contribution to the history of art cannot be underestimated.