The Skat Players
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| The Skat Players | |
|---|---|
| Die Skatspieler (German) | |
_1920.jpg) | |
| Artist | Otto Dix |
| Year | 1920 |
| Medium | Oil and collage on canvas |
| Dimensions | 110 cm × 87 cm (43 in × 34 in) |
| Location | Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin |
The Skat Players (German: Die Skatspieler), later titled Card-Playing War Cripples (German: Kartenspielende Kriegskrüppel), is an oil-and-collage-on-canvas painting executed by Otto Dix in 1920. It depicts disabled veterans of the First World War playing a card game. It is held at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. He also had the later title of Kartenspielende Kriegskrüppel (War cripples playing cards).[1] It was one of the first works of the artist in the style of New Objectivity.[2]
The painting represents three mutilated veterans of the First World War playing a card game named skat, very popular in Germany. It is part of a series of four paintings inspired by the post-World War I atmosphere executed in 1920: The Street in Prague, The Match Seller, The Skat Players and The Barricade.[3]
After the war, there were 2,700,000 wounded German soldiers, including 800,000 disabled in some way.[4] Dix had seen three war veterans, horribly mutilated, playing cards in the back room of a Dresden cafe. He immediately made a preparatory drawing of the scene. The final painting is rather morbid, since he further accentuated the horrific character of the scene: for example, he removed the two leg stumps of the character on the right of which only the torso remains, dressed in a blue jacket from which the penis protrudes. One of the players holds his cards in his mouth, the second with his toes, and the other with a mechanical hand.[5] Part of the head of the player on the left is burnt, and his left leg was replaced by a stick.
The player on the right has a mechanical lower jaw, formed by a fragment of a cigarette pack where Dix wrote jokingly "Unterkiefer: Prothese Mark: Dix", which means "lower jaw prosthesis, mark Dix", and is surrounded by a photo of himself who reads “Nur echt mit dem Bild des Erfinders”, meaning "only valid with the portrait of the inventor".[6] Behind the three players, three newspapers are suspended: the Dresdner Anzeiger, the Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, and the Berliner Tageblatt.[7] Inside the lamp, there is a skull.