Alexander Camaro
1901 Wroclaw – 1992 Berlin

Together with Otto Mueller, Alexander Camaro is a student at the Wroclaw State Academy of Arts and Crafts from 1920 until 1925. At the same time he completes his studies in music at the Wroclaw Conservatory. In 1926/27 he is director of his own painting school. He devotes himself to painterly studies as well as venturing various stage experiments, e.g. as a dancing partner of Mary Wigman. During the Third Reich he is prohibited from participating in exhibitions. In 1944/45 he illegally lives in Germany and roves France, Greece, and Holland. Together with his dancing partner, he ekes out a living as a dancer and acrobat in theatres, cabarets, variety shows, at the opera, and on domestic and foreign tours. His entire early work is lost as a result of bombings and unsuccessful war storage. From 1946 he resumes work as a freelance artist, holding his first one-man show a year later at the Galerie Gerd Rosen in Berlin. In 1951 Alexander Camaro is awarded the ‘Kunstpreis der Stadt Berlin’ (Art Prize of the City of Berlin). In that year he is appointed professor at the Berlin Academy of  Fine Arts, teaching there until 1975. From 1956 he is a member of the Academy of Arts, and in1974 he is guest of honour at Villa Massimo in Rome. In addition to numerous prizes, he is awarded the ‘Großes Verdienstkreuz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’ (Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany).