2001-41: Die Schlafenden von Fort Vaux (Gas-Tote) (The Sleepers of Fort Vaux (Gas Victims))

Amid the social decadence of 1920s Berlin, Dix produced an astonishing series of fifty etchings that recall the horrors he had experienced ten years before, as a machine-gunner on the Western Front during World War I. Taking inspiration from Spanish artist Francisco Goya's print series The Disasters of War, Dix exposed the harsh reality and hallucinatory quality of modern trench warfare. He experimented with a variety of etching and aquatint techniques, dipping the plate into an acid bath to expose the areas he wished to show as lines or areas of shadow. The "sleepers"— victims of a gas attack during the Battle at Verdun—become a muddy, indeterminate mass as one progresses into the background,as if the entire scene is being eaten away by acid.