This 1929 portrait is the best thing hanging in the Montreal Fine Arts Museum. Absolutely stunning.
More on Otto Dix, who was part of the amazing Glitter and Doom show we saw on our honeymoon.
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October 16th, 2008 at 9:49 am
I don’t know anything about Hugo Simons, but he’s very much a lawyer in the portrait!
His hands suggest he’s delivering some complex explanation with much eloquence, while his facial expression suggests he’s thinking: “I hope they’re buying this…keep goin’ Hugo, you’ll be all right! They always believe you in the end.”
I kinda hope he gets busted for some massive deception, disbarred, and moves to the country to hire out fly-fishing equipmen. There he finds his connection to the world and so can die in peace. Or I hope that’s what happened to him, if he has already been.
September 25th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Hugo Simons, also a German citizen, commissioned the painting to Dix. He emigrated to Montreal, I believe shortly before the war. His son, Mr. Jan Simons, sold the painting the the museum a few years ago. Mr Jan Simons was one of my professors at McGill, a wonderful gentleman who passed away three years ago, very sadly.