Dix family slams ‘scandalous’ handling of Nazi art trove

BERLIN (AFP) ― A granddaughter of German painter Otto Dix, a few of whose works were discovered in the vast trove of Nazi-looted art stashed in a Munich flat, has called Germany’s approach to the Third Reich’s spoils “scandalous.”

“Germany, generally speaking, has never really addressed the issue of works of art seized by the Nazis. It should have done that much earlier, soon after the war,” Nana Dix told AFP in a telephone interview from her home in Munich.

“A discovery like this has never happened and now that it has, I find it scandalous,” added Dix, an artist in her own right.

Her grandfather was persecuted by the Nazis, who branded his moody, often grotesque depictions of the impact of war on German society as “degenerate.”

The elder Dix’s painting was heavily influenced by the horrors he witnessed in the trenches of World War I, an experience he described as “hideous” and a view that would put him at odds with the Nazis’ glorification of the German military.

Among the Dix artworks that have come to light are a previously unknown self-portrait, two watercolors and a drawing.

“I was delighted when I heard about their discovery,” she said.

“I was of course pleased to know that they hadn’t been destroyed or burned. At the same time, I had a strange feeling, knowing that for years, these works were hidden in the home of Cornelius Gurlitt who was living a lie. This man cannot have led a very happy life.”

All the odder because Nana Dix lives less than a kilometer from Gurlitt’s garbage-strewn apartment where the canvases were hoarded.

When the Nazis mounted an infamous 1937 exhibition of “degenerate art,” mocking works they said violated the ideals of the Third Reich, paintings by Dix entitled “War Cripples” and “The Trench” had pride of place.

The two works were later burned.

Threatened with prison and deportation, Dix fled to a lakeside in southern Germany but was conscripted for service in World War II and taken prisoner by the French.

He was released in 1946 and resumed his artistic career in Dresden, maintaining a focus in his work on the horrors of war.