Otto Axer, UNTITLED, 1950

100 x 81 cm - oil on canvas

signed lower left: Oaxer
lower right, along the edge: OTTO AXER | 1950

♣ Droit de suite: ♣ A surcharge will be added to the purchase price pursuant to the right of the artist and his heirs to receive compensation in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994, on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

Otto Axer (Przemyśl 1906 – Warsaw 1983) – studied until 1929 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków under Wojciech Weiss and Karol Frycz, then in Paris, where he completed his studies in 1930. He exhibited his work both in Poland and abroad starting in 1929. During the interwar period, he temporarily used the pseudonym “Rex.” From an early age, alongside painting, drawing, and (occasionally) printmaking, he was involved in stage design. From 1932, he collaborated with theaters in Lviv, Łódź, and Warsaw. During the war, he lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, working as an art teacher at the School of Crafts. From the fall of 1942, he went into hiding with the family of his wife, Bronisława, née Mroczkowska. He fought in the Warsaw Uprising, after which he was taken as a prisoner of war to an Oflag in Magdeburg. From 1945 to 1949, he lived in Łódź, where he worked at the Polish Army Theater, and from 1947 also as a professor at the State Higher School of Drama (PWST). From 1949 onward, he lived in Warsaw, where he also taught at a theater school (1949–53). Until 1972, he worked as a set designer and director at the Polish Theater.