Fetching Rations near Pilkem, from War

The caricatured and impossibly optimistic sun contrasts with the brutish but more naturalistically depicted men, who are reduced to animals crawling behind the lines to deliver supplies. While this image is critical of the humiliation and destruction of war, like others it also shows the heroic capacities of soldiers to survive anything the industrial modern state can make them do. Otto Dix often signaled such persistence in the intense focus of his soldiers’ eyes, marked by strong line and contrast of tone.