Already during his studies, Schlichter developed into an artist who saw himself related to contemporary bohemian ideals and in rebellion against traditional bourgeois values.
Schlichter undertook various study trips to Strasbourg, in Alsace, to Italy and France, and got contacts to the underworld through fellow painter Julius Kaspar.
He would eventually be deployed as a munitions driver on the Western Front, but returned from there the following year after a hunger strike done to secure an early release.
Shortly before the opening of the exhibition, he founded the group Rih, together with other former graduates of the Karlsruhe art school, like Wladimir von Zabotin and Georg Scholz.
The artists were determined to counteract the more conservative Karlsruhe art scene with their works, which could be assigned at the time to Expressionism or Dadaism.
The group made provocative statements and actions; for example, phallic symbols drawn with chalk on the walls of the house pointed the way to the exhibition space.
Here the object Prussian Archangel, a soldier doll with a pig's head hanging from the ceiling, which he had created with Heartfield, caused a scandal.
Arbitrators, George Grosz, Wieland Herzfelde, John Heartfield and the gallery owner Otto Burchard were charged with insulting the Reichswehr.
[6] A major work from this period is his Dada Roof Studio, a watercolor showing an assortment of figures on an urban rooftop.
A child holds a pail and a woman wearing high button shoes (for which Schlichter displayed a marked fetish) stands on a pedestal, gesturing inexplicably.
His circle of friends and acquaintances at the time ranged from Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Sternberg, Alfred Döblin, Geza von Cziffra and Grosz, to Carl Zuckmayer, whom he had met in Karlsruhe.
Since then, Speedy contributed to the couple's livelihood through having love affairs that paid off financially, which led to feelings of guilt and outbursts of jealousy from her husband.
[9] Under the influence of his wife, he turned away from communism and the Berlin avant-garde in the early 1930s and began to revert to Roman Catholicism, and to sympathize with the circle of new nationalists.
"[14] In Rottenburg, Schlichter maintained good relations with Roman Catholic Bishop Joannes Baptista Sproll, an outspoken opponent of the Nazis, whom he portrayed.
At the beginning of 1938 Schlichter was temporarily removed from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, expelled, banned from exhibiting, and was shortly thereafter, denounced because of his "non-National Socialist lifestyle".
In the 1950s, he had found a socially acceptable representation for his personal fantasies, by creating paintings with surreal and apocalyptical landscapes that seem to have been inspired by Giorgio de Chirico, Yves Tanguy or Salvador Dalí.