Portraying a Nation: Germany 1919-1933 review – art at its most deliberately obscene

Tate Liverpool
Thought Liza Minnelli in Cabaret was the peak of Weimar decadence? Think again. A pungent new exhibition reveals a world of chaos, corsets and bloodstained crosses that the Nazis were about to sweep away

When Hana Koch died in 2006, she left her family a modern German treasure hidden in an old altarpiece in her Bavaria home. Koch had survived the extremes and the violence of Germany in the previous century and through it all kept with her an extraordinary artistic document of innocence and love. For Koch was the stepdaughter of the great artist Otto Dix and, in 1925, when she was five years old, he made her a beautiful, handpainted picture book full of his joyously original visions of German folktales, biblical stories and comical monsters.

The Bremen Town Musicians – from the Brothers Grimm – and Saint Christopher carrying Christ are among the traditional German childhood images Dix reinvents in his Bilderbuch für Hana (Picture Book for Hana). It went on public view in Germany for the first time last year and is now at Tate Liverpool.

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