(Gera 1891–1969 Singen)
Bettina with nasturtiums, 1952, signed Dix, pastels on handmade paper, 62.5 x 48.5 cm, framed, (PS)

Photo certificate:
Ulrike Lorenz, Gera, 20.6.2000 Provenance:
Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf
Private Collection, Germany

Literature:
Ulrike Lorenz, Otto Dix, Werkverzeichnis der Zeichnungen und Pastelle, Weimar 2003, vol. VI, p. 2761, no. SW 6.4.2.

Exhibited:
Kunstsammlung Gera, Un-Verblümt, Otto Dix, Florale Motive im Werk des deutschen Malers - Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Druckgrafik, 24.6 - 23.9.2007, p. 108 and p. 130.

The birth of his granddaughter, Bettina prompted Otto Dix to produce many portraits of babies, toddlers and children between the years 1950 – 56, although Bettina remained his key motif. Employing a late Expressionist palette, using powerful blue, yellow, red and green tones, Dix portrays the little girl, aged around 3 years old, against a stylised flower meadow. Bettina runs towards her grandfather as he paints her and proudly presents him with a bunch of nasturtiums, which she brandishes in her raised left hand. Dix experimented with many varied artistic elements in his late work. Often, he does not employ colour as a specific, localised hue, but instead, as here, he interlinks compositional objects and the figure of his granddaughter, using ornamental, overarching, abstract colour fields. The powerful dark contours, highlighted by the artist and used to delineate an object or to describe its internal structure, disappear entirely or are applied in delicate colour contrasts, such as in his depiction of Bettina in this work. Lines start to flow freely and, as in the flowers here, end in ornamental flourishes or stylised colour fields. Line and pictorial object remain linked, but Dix is far more concerned with colour contrasts and the modulation of line on a plane, and to the reduction of form to the essential in his depiction of his sitter – his granddaughter, Bettina.