The War (Dix engravings)

The British Museum, which holds a complete set of the folio prints, has described the series as "Dix's central achievement as a graphic artist"; the auction house Christie's has described it as "one of the finest and most unflinching depictions of war in western art".

Dix's reputation for controversy continued in 1925, when he successfully defended himself against charges of indecency following exhibitions in Berlin and Darmstadt of two paintings of prostitutes.

In the series, Dix depicts scenes of executions and famine, with trenches and corpses amid the desolate landscapes in Flanders and the Somme.

He shows images of emaciated and decaying corpses, grimacing skeletons, bodies crucified or impaled on barbed wire, the wounded with bulging eyes and open flesh, in a hallucinatory dance macabre.

Ten of the prints highlight the disproportionate burdens borne by soldiers in different branches of the armed forces: the infantrymen are mutilated, wounded, suffer, go mad and die, while sailors binge with prostitutes.

The series was published in Berlin by Karl Nierendorf, as a folio of fifty engravings, in five portfolios of ten etchings each, entitled Der Krieg ("The War").

They were an instant critical and popular success, praised for their depiction of the horrific reality of modern warfare in the First World War, but also controversial.