Dix and his friend Grosz were the two most relentlessly uncompromising depictors of the effects on German society of World War I. He knew Grosz, and Heartfield, from Berlin Dada days, although his flirtation with that movement was brief. Sander, another friend, credited conversations with Dix as formative in his own great unfinished project. Bellmer met him as a young engineering student.