Painter, printmaker. Studied in Berlin from 1905 to 1910, including two years as a master student with Lovis Corinth, then in Weimar. Traveled widely through Europe for two years before resettling in Berlin in 1913. Served in World War I from 1915 until 1918. After the armistice joined the Novembergruppe of artists advocating socialist revolution and a greater role for artists in the new German Republic.

Best known today for lithographs created in late 1918 and early 1919 for the Werbedienst der deutschen Republik, a government-funded propaganda agency that papered Berlin with hundreds of thousands of socialist political posters by both commercial designers and Expressionists. Developed a distinctive graphic style in which expressionist vocabularies of violent color and distorted form united with dynamic yet legible text exhorting workers to support the new Republic.

From 1936 until 1943, under the directorship of Hugo Häring, taught at the private Reimann School, a refuge for nonconformist artists in Nazi Berlin. Most of his work was destroyed during bombing raids in 1944.

Selected Bibliography

Grabowski, Jörn. Wählt Links! Das politische Plakat in Deutschland, 1918–1933. Exh. cat. East Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1985