Born in Eberswalde on 10 March 1927. The German painter studied at the Kunstschule in the orangery of the castle of Eutin. In 1947 he went to the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Hamburg, and studied graphic art. He extended his training by another semester to work under Willem Gremm. In 1951 he was offered a teaching post at the school, which he held until 1961. In 1963 he became Professor for the Graphic Arts and Painting. Between 1951 and 1952, under the instruction of Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka, he produced prints after their originals. In 1957 he created a series of Tachist paintings, for example S111/57 but he destroyed most of them later.

Towards the end of the 1950s he produced his first figurative prints and paintings. In the beginning their subjects were events from more recent German history, for example the set of lithographs 20 July 1944 (1959; Berlin, Gal. Brusberg), which depicted the execution of the men who had conspired against Adolf Hitler. This subject-matter was increasingly replaced by an eroticism that is partly Surrealist, partly decorative. In 1960 the public prosecutor of Hamburg confiscated such a series of prints.

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