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Otto Neumann

Otto Neumann (1895-1975) was an expressionist painter and printmaker born in Heidelberg, Germany. He was one of the most versatile and original artists of the twentieth century. Neumann created works of stark brutality, sumptuous beauty, and sleek simplicity in an array of media oils, watercolors, chalk, graphite, lithographs, woodcuts, and monotypes, among others. He lived through revolutionary changes in the art world of prewar and postwar Germany, and drew inspiration from his contemporaries and predecessors, as well as from sources literary and deeply personal. Today, Neumann is best known for his subtly hued woodcuts and monotypes of human, animal, and abstract forms, created in the last twenty-five years of his life. Neumann's works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Institute of Art, Goethe Institute, Museum of Modern Art New York, Portland Art Museum, Rose Art Museum, Tampa Museum of Art, Gibbes Museum of Fine Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art.