Maker/Artist

Mueller, Otto

German painter and lithographer, 1874-1930

German painter of Silesian birth. Mueller's mother was rumored to be a gypsy, and this had repercussions in his later work. From 1890 to 1894 he appenticed as a lithographer in Görlitz. From 1896 to 1898, he studied at the Kunstakademie in Dresden. From 1898 to 1908 he returned to Silesia, then relocated to Berlin, where he joined the Neue Sezession. In 1910 he joined the newly formed Die Brücke group. As a member of Die Brücke he was invited to show in the second exhibit of the Blaue Reiter in Munich, 1912. He did not adhere to the formal tenets of Die Brücke, but drew influence from the German expressionists and Gauguin. His style was graphic and his subjects were generally nude figures in idealized landscapes. After serving in the military, he became a professor at the Kunstakademie Breslau in 1919, a post he occupied until his death. After 1919 he painted idealized images of the life of the gypsies, whom he had studied on trips to the Balkans, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. He was among those named as "degenerate artists" in Nazi Germany.

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