Saunders Fine Art

Additional Information

Phillipp Heinrich Erich Mueller-Kraus was born in Aachen on 9th February 1911. He was a German painter and print maker

Mueller-Kraus attended the Kunstgewerbeschule, Aachen (1928-31) where he studied under Anton Wending (1891-1965) and the Kölner Werkschulen (Cologne Art and Craft Schools) where he developed an interest in abstract art. As a student, he was a friend of the German artist, filmmaker and printmaker Karl Otto Götz (1914-2017).

Mueller-Kraus worked and exhibited in Cologne until his work was banned in 1933. Following the Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) Exhibition organised by Adolf Ziegler and the Nazi Party in Munich (1937), Mueller-Kraus was one of the many German artists to have their works destroyed. During World War II, Mueller-Kraus was conscripted into the German army and he was stationed in Northern Europe. His Cologne studio was destroyed in 1943. After the war, Mueller-Kraus returned briefly to Germany before moving to Sweden in the early 1950s.

Examples of his early works - Revolution (1932), Figurine (1943) and Kriegsgespenst (1945) are held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. There was a posthumous retrospective exhibition of his work held at the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen (1980).

Erich Mueller-Kraus died on 13th April 1967, aged 56.