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The Painter Otto Dix and His Wife, Martha

A work made of gelatin silver print.
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv Köln / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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  • A work made of gelatin silver print.

Date:

1925/26, printed 1950/64

Artist:

August Sander
German, 1876–1964

About this artwork

August Sander, a professional portrait photographer based in Cologne, first exhibited his ambitious People of the 20th Century project in 1927. The final compilation, constituting (as Sander put it) a “physiognomical time exposure of German man,” was published posthumously and included over 600 portraits made between 1892 and 1954. Each sitter is featured at home or at work, dressed and posed according to their social identity. Sander categorized his subjects within a personally constructed social hierarchy, ranging from artists and farmers to beggars and the mentally ill. Otto Dix was a well-known painter whose work had led Sander to reassess his earlier portraiture and broaden its scope. This photograph appears in the section on women, alongside several portraits of artists and their wives; in contrast to the frontal poses usually found in his images of couples, in these Sander presented one spouse in profile.
— Permanent collection label

The portraits of August Sander are notable for their directness and freedom from the stiff decorum common to studio portraiture of his day. After working for many years as an itinerant photographer, Sander developed a quasi-scientific project in the 1920s to catalogue representatives of German society. Influenced by the work of painters such as Otto Dix, his subject here, this venture led Sander to reassess his earlier portraits and broaden the scope of his portraiture. Launching his project in 1927, Sander described his aim “to see things as they are and not as they should or might be … to tell the truth about our age and people.” Dix, who had recently published The War, a portfolio of gruesome etchings, similarly aspired to a detached recording of momentous events: “I … had to see how someone next to me suddenly fell and was gone, the bullet hitting him right in the middle.”

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

August Sander

Title

The Painter Otto Dix and His Wife, Martha

Place

Germany (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1925–1926

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Inscriptions

Unmarked recto; printed verso, on affixed sticker on mount, lower center, in black ink: "Sander, "Meschen des 20. Jahrhunderts"; inscribed recto, lower left, in blue ink: "Prof Otto Dix und Frau"

Dimensions

Image, site: 24.7 × 21.7 cm (9 3/4 × 8 9/16 in.); Mount: 43.9 × 34.3 cm (17 5/16 × 13 9/16 in.)

Credit Line

Acquired through a grant from the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation

Reference Number

1996.91

Copyright

© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv Köln / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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