Ina Jessen

As I walk through the museum, I can tell which painting is based on a model and which is not - Caroline von Grone has a keen eye for situations and an unerring one for portraits. In 1991, she was a master-class student under Klaus Rinke at the D sseldorf Art Academy and, quite untypically for that time, had turned to painting portraits, either of models she had approached, for instance in subway stations, or later then of models who commissioned a portrait from her. It is absolutely her strength that she does not invent observations. This results in a visual acuity that is a definite pleasure for the viewer. Her paintings time and again offer an image within the image, such as abstractly conceived tiled walls, floor tiles, and the interiors of public places such as telephone booths and ticket machines. She also has frequently painted houses, for example, in a northern German housing estate, until these were eventually demolished. These ultimate conditions also interested her, as a counterpoint to the photography of, for instance, the Bechers. Part of Caroline von Grone's practice has always been the painting in public, because otherwise she would not be able to capture the still-life presence within the picture if I tried to paint it based on a photograph.

The National Socialist arts policy denounced Otto Dix (1891–1969) and his verist oeuvre for "endangering public morality" and "adversely affecting the fighting spirit of the German people." Dix reacted by becoming a painter who oscillated in motifs and style between conservatism and critical commentary, and sought recognition despite being defamed. This forced, radical artistic transformation also led to "concealed," in part subversive or contradictory iconographies, to which this book is dedicated. The painter’s art is analyzed against the backdrop of developments in the arts policy in Germany and the Weimar Republic until into the postwar period; all genres—landscapes, portraits, and (Christian) figurative pictures—are examined.