| The Match Seller | |
|---|---|
| German: Streichholzhändler | |
 | |
| Artist | Otto Dix |
| Year | 1920 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas and collage |
| Dimensions | 140 cm × 166 cm (4.6 ft × 5.45 ft) |
| Location | Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart |
The Match Seller (German: Streichholzhändler) is a 1920 oil painting with collage elements by the German Dada and Neue Sachlichkeit artist Otto Dix. Completed one year after the end of World War I (then known as the Great War), the composition depicts a crippled and homeless veteran match seller who is ostensibly ignored by bourgeois passersby on a street in Germany.
The painting has been interpreted as a critique the war's brutality and the neglect of veterans in German society, while alluding to the artist's disapproval of the Weimar Republic's societal and political decay. Dix incorporated collage in the Match Seller, a technique popularized by Dada artists, to diverge from traditional art forms. Similarly to other works by Dix, The Match Seller was labeled as "degenerate art" by the Nazi regime, which confiscated it sometime between 1937 and 1938. The painting is currently in the permanent collection of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany.