Early Life, Family and Artistic Training Untermhaus, Germany, 2 December 1891. The environment shaping Otto Dix is one of stark industrial labor and quiet, poetic undertones. His father, Franz Dix, works in an iron foundry, a setting defined by heavy toil. His mother, Louise, a seamstress, carries a history of writing poetry. This domestic landscape provides the first, subtle friction between the grit of manual labor and the impulse t…