If you've ever watched a George Carlin stand-up routine, right off the bat you get unfiltered, scathing, satirical social commentary that was funny as hell. Otto Dix was like that.

Dix was an artillery gunner in World War I from 1915 to 1918 on a side of the war that would ultimately lose. Germany was ravaged following his return home. Prostitution spiked due to many German soldiers’ wives becoming widows and the inflation of the German reichsmark throwing the populace into poverty. All this inspired the imagery behind Black Nude.

With the ruined world he returned to, it was no wonder Dix’s early work often included prostitutes, war veterans, and the depravity and horror around them. Dix felt that “a dimension of ugliness” was untapped in art and he sought to bring it to light.

His work was shocking enough to earn the enmity of the Nazis as a “degenerate” and got him barred from teaching art in 1933. Later, in 1939, he was arrested and jailed by the Gestapo, accused of being involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Maybe the Fuhrer was jealous of Dix’s artistic successes, reminded of his own failed artistic dreams before the wars.

It’s equal parts funny and fitting that the work of a traumatized war veteran is located in a city known for having a strong military presence in a nation with a love for its military culture: San Diego holds the largest base for the U.S. Navy in Coronado and trains both future Marines and Marines seeking amphibious combat at Parris Island and Camp Pendleton. The donor of Black Nude, Dr. Vance Kondon, was an Air Force flight surgeon before he settled in San Diego and became a civilian medical practitioner.

Kondon was awestruck by German Expressionism and collected Dix’s paintings along with many others. Following a kerfuffle with the local art administration in 1983 after the firing of a friend, he moved to Amsterdam in the 1990s and stayed there until his death in 1996.