Sir, – It was good to see your reproduction of Otto Dix’s self-portrait (World News, November 6th), instantly recognisable from when I met him in 1955, many years after he painted it. “Pappi Dix”, as we were encouraged to call him, was a frequent visitor to the home of his former fellow art student, Fritz Mühlenweg of Allensbach/ Konstanz, father of my student friend Regina.
Thoroughly irascible and ever his own man, he was carving a large Christmas goose with aplomb when I first encountered him, sending boiling fat in all directions. A few weeks later he and “Mammi Dix” were involved in a car accident and we were summoned to bring their orphaned grand-daughter, then staying at the Mühlenwegs’, to the hospital at Radolfzell, 10 miles away. No transport was available in the snow-bound village so we all took turns pulling the very cold and loudly-complaining five-year-old Bettina on a makeshift sledge on that endless journey.
The Dix grandparents were duly grateful (not that it was his way to show it) and shortly after he painted an inimitable portrait of the flaxen-haired Bettina, perhaps as a record of that event. It is probably still in private hands. – Yours, etc,
EDA SAGARRA,
Garville Avenue, Dublin 6.