Otto Dix

Dix's experience as a machine-gun commander during World War I profoundly affected his artistic production throughout the 1920s. The horrors of war and the depravity and corruption of Weimar Germany became his major subjects. This drawing was directly inspired by the contemporary crisis in Germany, which widened economic disparities among classes. A bourgeois couple drink at a table with a Nazi, while hungry workers demonstrate in the background. Its political message reflects Dix's active involvement in left-wing organizations during the post-war decade.