Wire Entanglement in Front of a Trench, from War

Otto Dix, like Max Beckmann, had a strong interest in prominent print artists of the past, including Francisco de Goya. The strong contrast of light and dark in this print, as well as the tortured bodies splayed on the crosses of the barbed-wire frames, indicates his appreciation of the style and concept of Goya’s series The Disasters of War. Such images formed a devastating critique of the atrocities of war as experienced in World War I.