Willy Jaeckel

Willy Gustav Erich Jaeckel (10 February 1888 – 30 January 1944) was a German painter, lithographer and representative of the Expressionist art movement. Jaeckel was born on 10 February 1888 in Breslau, German Empire (present-day Wrocław, Poland). His father was a public lands manager and he originally intended to become a forest ranger, but poor health forced him to change his plans. From 1906 to 1908, he studied at the Staatliche Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe Breslau, then enrolled at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, under the direction of Otto Gussmann, an ornamental painter. In 1913, he moved to Berlin to work as a free-lance artist and became a member of the Berlin Secession in 1915. Four years later, he was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and became a teacher at the University of the Arts in 1925. His first successful painting was "Kampf" (Battle, or Struggle), a large canvas featuring a bellowing, muscular, naked man. In 1928, he was awarded the "Georg-Schlicht-Preis" for the "most beautiful portrait of a German woman". His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics and the 1932 Summer Olympics. He was named an associate professor in 1933, but he was dismissed when the Nazis came to power.