Adolf Uzarski (1885 - 1970)

Adolf Uzarski

Adolf Uzarski was a German writer, painter and illustrator.

Trained as an architect, Adolf also graduated from the Düsseldorf School of Arts and Crafts, and exhibited his first Art Nouveau paintings. During the First World War he painted posters and postcards with patriotic content, during these years his anti-war lithograph series "Dance of Death" was published. In 1919 Adolf Uzarski became one of the founders of the avant-garde artists' association "Young Rhineland" in Düsseldorf, he became interested in Expressionism and the current in art "New Materiality".

Uzarski always opposed militarism, nationalism and anti-Semitism, and his art was caricatured and sharply satirical of bourgeois society. With the advent of the National Socialists in Germany in 1933, Adolf Uzarski was persecuted. For many years he had to live semi-clandestinely, in 1942 the Nazis condemned him as a degenerate artist and forbade him to paint, forcing him to flee to Belgium. At the end of World War II, Uzarski returned to Düsseldorf and continued his career.

From 1919, Adolf Uzarski began writing satirical novels, publishing a total of 10 volumes, as well as children's picture books.