Erfurth and the painter Otto Dix (1891-1969) became close friends in the 1920s, when both artists lived in Dresden and created portraits of each other. Having absorbed the artistic concepts of nineteenth-century Realist portraiture early in his career, Erfurth carried that aesthetic into the Golden Twenties. Among the outstanding psychological studies he made of the Weimar Republic's citizenry from 1919 to 1933- people prominent in the arts, science, and politics- is this close-up photograph of Dix. The penetrating eyes reveal the keen intellect of a person accustomed to scrutinizing others as subjects for his art. Dix established himself in the 1920s as a leading figure of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement in which artists, reacting against Expressionism, depicted German life realistically with unflinching attention to detail.

-SBJ