Otto Dix’s satirical drawing decries the widening economic disparity dividing the social classes in Weimar Germany. In the highly detailed foreground, an array of extravagantly attired bourgeois drink champagne in a sumptuous setting. Dix adopts a more summary and straightforward approach to representing the proletarians in the background, whose slogan, “Wir wollen Brot!” (“We want bread!”), gives the drawing its name.
Otto Dix (German 1891−1969), We Want Bread! (Wir wollen Brot!), 1923. India ink over traces of graphite pencil on wove paper, 15 1/4 x 16 3/4 inches (38.7 x 42.6 cm). Bequest of Fred Ebb, 2005.125.
© Otto Dix/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn