It is the "primal themes of humanity", life and death, that are at the core of Otto Dix' fascinating oeuvre that is characterized by many different stylistic tendencies. After impressionistic beginnings, the 21-year-old Dix attained a clarity of form and expression the latest in 1912 with the "Selbstbildnis mit Nelke“ (Self-Portrait with Carnation, The Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan) that would be formative for his further work: Whether its the visions of war dismantled in a Cubist manner or the figure pictures in a disturbingly exaggerated Critical Realism, in which Dix decries social grievances, poverty and hardships of the common people. Dix always fascinates with the formal clarity of his painting. Dix became first occupied with the motif of mother and baby, which is directly related to the subject of birth and the beginning of life, in the 1921 painting "Frau mit Kind" (Woman with Child, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden). It shows a woman stricken by poverty, with an emaciated face and weary eyes she presents the baby in her arms as the hopeful beginning of a new life. It is the new beginning, the originality and purity of life that Dix liked about this motif. While the famous portrait of his parents or his female nudes show figures marked by work and life in a disillusioned, exaggerated physicality, the newborn child bears hope for a better, fulfilled life. With the births of his own three children, Nelly, Ursus and Jan between 1923 and 1928, these motifs became even more important for Dix' works. Fascinated by the originality of the beginning, Dix made the painting "Neugeborener mit Nabelschnur auf Tuch (Ursus)" (Newborn with umbilical cord on cloth (Ursus), Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden) in 1927. A work that was downright disturbing in its directness, as it shows the newly born infant screaming at life with an anguished, distorted, reddened face. In 1929, he created the painting "Frau Martha Dix mit Jan" and in the years that followed several depictions of pregnant women who, tormented by the weight of their powerful bodies, were carrying new life. In 1932 he eventually made our "Stillende Mutter" (Breastfeeding Mother), who turns her gently bowed head towards the child in deep devotion. For her intimacy and ideal transfiguration, she is reminiscent of famous Renaissance portraits of Mary, such as the breastfeeding "Madonna Litta" (Hermitage, St. Petersburg), which had been ascribd to Da Vinci for a long time. With this painting, Dix left us a composition of classical beauty dedicated to the sensuality and purity of the beginning of life. One seems to recognize the physiognomy of young Martha in the facial features of the mother, who is nursing like a Madonna. Dix, whose own children had already outgrown infancy in 1932 and who had already begun a relationship with Käthe König in the late 1920s, which he was to continue for many years parallel to his marriage, once again pays homage to a transfigured ideal of a magic beginning. From then on, both his private and professional life began to fall apart. Just a year after our work was made, he was dismissed from his post at the Dresden Art Academy by the National Socialists. This shows once again that Dix' works revolve around the existential themes of life and death and that he was a master of the artistic adaptation and transformation. With great aplomb, he repeatedly makes reference to art-historical traditions - as is the case in "Stillende Mutter" - for his own artistic purpose. In 1932, Dix also completed his famous triptych "Der Krieg" (The War, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden), which has a formal structure based on medieval altars and is dedicated to the experiences of suffering and death during the First World War. Today it is regarded a key work of German Realism. In 1932, the two extremes of life and death directly collided in Dix' oeuvre. And in 1934, Dix painted his unfortunately destroyed "Selbstbildnis mit Ursus und Jan “ (Self-Portrait with Ursus and Jan). In terms of the landscape view and the motif of the boy being carried on the artist's shoulders, it is clearly based on medieval depictions of St. Christopher, who in his function as patron saint carries the baby Jesus and thus the new life protectively on his shoulders through the perils of life. [JS]