Pferdekadaver (Horse Cadaver), plate 5 from Der Krieg (The War)

Agony, terror, death, annihilation. These are the subjects of Otto Dix’s harrowing print series Der Krieg (War). Dix had witnessed the horror of the battlefield firsthand, serving as an infantryman in World War I from 1915 to the last days of fighting in 1918. Some five years passed before he was ready to bring the trauma to his printmaking. He began Der Krieg in 1923 and published the 50-print series in Berlin the next year. This vivid image portrays the grotesquely mutilated corpse of a cavalry horse, its three remaining legs arranged like so many broken fence posts. Though the combatants of World War I relied heavily on mechanization, it is estimated that more than eight million horses perished in the conflict.