Otto Eglau
German, 1917 - 1988
http://www.artnet.com/artists/otto-eglau/
Otto Eglau was a German artist whose prints and paintings deconstruct scenes taken from aerial views. Frequently featuring power lines framing a city street or maritime ropes rendered into near-abstract compositions, Eglau divides his compositions into striking graphic fragments. In his drypoint etching Nets on the Beach (1960), winding lines resemble a system of rivers seen from above. Born on April 20, 1917 in Berlin, Germany, he spent his early adulthood serving in the Nazi army during World War II, during which he was captured and held as a prisoner of war. Upon his release in 1947, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, where he studied under painters such as Oskar Nerlinger and Max Kaus. Eglau spent the next 20 years travelling the world by sea and teaching at the Technical University of Berlin. Today, the artist’s works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Brooklyn Museum, among others. Eglau died on February 23, 1988 in Kampen, Germany.
