One of the most extensive collections of prints by Otto Dix is to be offered at auction this month in which the German artist’s unique perspective of fighting in the first world war and coping with its aftermath is given expression in some of the most poignant images of 20th-century Europe. The works – which include Dix’s early prints and rare, complete portfolios from drypoint etchings to to wood cuts and aquatints – are considered valuable rarities, having been produced only in limited runs. Because many of his paintings were confiscated and destroyed by the Nazi propaganda ministry, which labelled them “degenerate”, the prints, which have survived in far greater number, form the bulk of his work. “As they were more affordable than his paintings, the prints were more likely to be hanging in private homes rather than galleries and were therefore less likely to be confiscated,” Séverine Nackers, the head of prints for Sotheby’s Europe, said. The works, which will be sold by Sotheby’s London in a 10-day online auction from 9 March, are with a private European collector who acquired them in the 1960s from Galerie Nierendorf. Its owner, the Berlin ex-banker Karl Nierendorf, was one of Dix’s greatest champions and supporters and published about 20 of his prints as well as three portfolios, including Der Krieg, (the war), which is the highlight of the London sale. Widely considered the most important German portfolio of prints of the 20th century, Der Krieg, which is estimated at £200,000 to £300,000, comprises 50 etchings with drypoint and aquatint. Executed in 1923-24, it chronicles the artist’s life on the western front, where he served as a machine gunner for three years, including at the battle of the Somme, offering him an angle of vision he would adopt as his own for life. “He lived mainly underground, in dugouts, and you see he is always looking at everything from this perspective, looking down rather than up – even after the war this is the perspective from which he viewed the world,” Nackers said. “His mantra was that artists should not look away and he never did, because he did not want the horrors of war and its after-effects to be repeated.” No artist, wrote a critic in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper at the time, was able to approximate Dix’s ability to convey “the apocalyptic face and the naked grimace of war”. One series in the portfolio offers a documentary study of what his military unit might have seen as they waded through the carnage of mud and corpses, weighed down by their equipment. He also depicts the squalor of life in the dark, dank dugouts and the effects of poison gas. Images that convey the absurdities of war – such as soldiers firing at the moon after being ordered to keep up the attack come what may – are something of a Dix trademark. Ian Jeffrey from the Archive of Modern Conflict, which has advised Sotheby’s on the collection, has said although Dix sketched and drew at the front, he mainly worked from memory. He was likely inspired by Goya, whose series of early 19th century prints, The Disasters of War, have an equally powerful ethical dimension. Jeffrey points out that Dix’s preoccupation with using “murky aquatint” was based on his first-hand experience of “the theatre of war [being] poorly and oddly lit by carbide lamps, by moonlight and by Verey flames”. They in turn illuminated the horrors such as the exploded corpses of men and horses. Significantly, Der Krieg also goes beyond the scene of the battlefield to show the collateral damage, depicting a woman driven mad by the grief of losing a child. Dix’s view extends to post-war Dresden, where he witnessed first-hand after being demobilised the shattered lives of veterans, such as the amputee forced to sell matchsticks who was ignored by passersby except for a dog, which urinates on his stump. He depicted prostitutes and sex killers, the excess, ecstasy and garishness of Weimar Germany, abandoning a brief foray into romantic fantasy in favour of harsh reality. Relief of sorts, comes in Zirkus, his drypoint set of circus prints in which the relative glamour of the famous Sarrasani Circus, based in Dresden, is a welcome contrast to the grimness of city life. But even here death is not far away, in the Death Defiers and the Lion Tamer, and in the aloof and steely expressions on the faces of the performers. Dix’s rare woodcuts, described as among the most optimistic of his works, capture the dynamism of city life, in the crackle and fizz of the electric tram, whose passengers shout to be heard above the din. In Noise of the Street, he even manages to evoke a note of romance, albeit referring to life’s brevity in a caption from the composer Franz Liszt’s lied O Love as Long as You Can Love. Dix only began his formal training as an artist after the end of the war. Often considered too honest and shocking, he was adopted by the anti-war movement but his exhibited works frequently had to be taken down in response to protests long before the rise of the Nazis. Martin Dammann, a painter and member of the Archive of Modern Conflict, describes Dix as “a unique figure in the art of the 20th century” as the only visual artist who survived the first world war and then transformed his trauma into his works.