From October 4 to 14, the ifa Gallery in Stuttgart will be presenting works from Otto Dix’s cycle Der Krieg (The War) in dialogue with contemporary positions from the ifa art collection: Six artists who work with video and performance will juxtapose their video works with 13 selected prints by Dix for the exhibition Was in Wirklichkeit ist (What Really Is) – supplemented by personal statements that highlight the relevance of Dix’s work today. The film works will be presented for the first time in the context of the ifa art collection and at the ifa Gallery Stuttgart. Works by Yvon Chabrowski, Sven Johne, Lisa Kohl, Georg Lutz, Raphael Sbrzesny, and Maya Schweizer are shown in dialogue with works by Otto Dix, curated by Bettina Korintenberg and Susanne Weiß.
Image above: Georg Lutz, Garden, 2023, Filmstill © Georg Lutz, Kunstsammlung des ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.
Hardly any other artist has captured the horrors of World War I as relentlessly and shockingly in images as Otto Dix. Images that, in their urgency, come close to us and reach into the present. His works touch us, awaken memories, and refer to images from our cultural memory. They raise questions and, in the violence of current wars, take on oppressive relevance. Interest in Dix remains unbroken. Since 1993, his cycle of works Der Krieg (The War) has traveled around the world in a touring exhibition organized by the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and conceived in collaboration with Eugen Keuerleber: with 119 stops in over 50 countries worldwide, most recently in Sri Lanka, Georgia, and Armenia (2023).
The exhibition at the ifa Gallery in Stuttgart poses the question, “How can Dix be shown today?” and addresses it with personal inquiries and approaches. The six artists—Yvon Chabrowski, Sven Johne, Lisa Kohl, Georg Lutz, Raphael Sbrzesny, and Maya Schweizer—were each invited to select works from the ifa touring exhibition with their video work, which is part of the ifa art collection, and to write a personal statement.
The result is a selection of 13 works from the 1924 etching cycle Der Krieg (The War). Der Krieg is both a testimony to and a memorial of the horrors of the First World War and is directly inspired by Dix’s experiences as a soldier. Over 600 drawings were created during his time at the front from 1915 to 1918, bearing witness to the shocking reality of trench warfare, rubble, death, and apocalyptic war landscapes.
The combination of performative, documentary, and poetic video works and the voices of the artists opens up new levels of meaning in Dix’s work and connections to themes such as trauma, collective memory, violence, repression, the body, landscape, ideology, and absurdity.
The exhibition takes its title from a quote by Otto Dix: “I am a visual person, not a philosopher. That is why I repeatedly take a stand in my paintings, showing what is real and what must be said for the sake of truth.”
What is in reality continues the Out of the Box program series, in which the ifa galleries in Berlin and Stuttgart have been initiating dialogical encounters between individual artistic positions from the ifa art collection and international contemporary artists since 2020.
WHEN?
Exhibition dates: Saturday, October 4, 2025, to Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Opening hours: daily from noon to 7:00 pm
Artist talk: Saturday, October 4, 2025, 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm
Tandem tour: Saturday, October 11, 2025, noon
Lunchtime matinee: Saturday, October 11, 2025, 2:00 pm
Daily tours: Sunday, October 5 to Tuesday, October 14, 2025, starting at 5:00 pm
WHERE?
ifa Gallery Stuttgart
Charlottenplatz 17
D-70173 Stuttgart
COST?
Free admission
