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OTTO HELMUT GERSTER* (Berlin 1907 - 1982 Wassen)
Hydra, 1965
oil/canvas, 70,2 x 90 cm
monogrammed OG, dated 65
verso label Otto Gerster "Hydra" 70/90 cm Oel auf Leinen

ESTIMATE °€ 800 - 1600
STARTING PRICE °€ 800

Otto Gerster worked in Berlin in the 1920s as a commercial artist, textile and fashion illustrator for various print media. In 1928 he began studying painting and graphics with Emil Rudolf Weiß at the art college in Berlin-Charlottenburg, In 1936 he became a master student there with Ferdinand Spiegel. Gerster soon earned his living as a freelance artist, He received commissions for book illustrations, applied graphics, large-format paintings and the typical “monumental design” of halls for exhibitions and trade fairs. In 1933 he received the Albrecht Dürer Prize from the city of Nuremberg, and in 1939 he was appointed to the Meisterschule für das gestaltende Handwerk der Hansestadt Köln to take over the class for monumental and wall painting. Drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1942, he began his teaching career after the end of the war and captivity in 1946 at the reopened "Kölner Werkschulen" and led a master class for free and applied painting in the art and design department of the TH of Cologne as a professor until his retirement in 1972. The painter Bettina Heinen-Ayech is one of his students. Otto Gerster became a member of the German Artists' Association in 1955. In 1957 he became artistic director for political public relations in Bonn and designed the CDU federal election campaign, which resulted in 50.2 percent of the vote for the Union under Konrad Adenauer. In 2020, during the renovation of the former Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum on the Ubierring in Cologne, large-scale sgraffiti by Gerster was discovered, which was hidden behind tuff stone slabs on the facade. Only a few sgraffiti by Gerster have survived. The murals were probably created in 1948 after the museum was converted into a Kammerspiele venue. Wall paintings by Gerster were found in Duisburg main station as early as 2009.

PLEASE NOTE:
The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked °), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax of 13%, for photographs 20%, is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium.
The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.

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