Front-line Soldier in Brussels, from War

Most of the prints in the third folio of War take up the social world in which the soldiers interacted, including images of prostitution, an everyday aspect—like the trench—of the soldiers’ world. For Otto Dix’s soldiers, though, the world of sex and prostitution is not one of beauty and seduction, but of grotesque bodies displayed in the vulgar fashions of the street. The soldier lurking in the corner of this print observes this display of materialist values and vice, which offers him no moral or ethical solace away from the front.