Egon Adler

Untitled (Rooftops), ca. 1960

Gouache on paper

13 3/4 x 16 1/2 inches

#13724

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Egon Adler was born in Karlsbad, Germany in 1892. Adler attended art academies in Berlin, Munich and Weimar. In the 1930s, he owned his own advertising agency in Berlin and later became the advertising director for 20th Century Fox in Prague, Czechoslovakia. An accomplished easel painter, Adler is closely associated with the Munich Expressionists. In 1912, he exhibited in Berlin with Galerie Der Sturm and at the First German Autumn Salon in Berlin in 1913.

In 1932, Adler and his family left Berlin under Nazi rule for Prague. When Prague no longer proved safe for the Jewish family, they emigrated to Paris, where he designed posters and worked in publicity for 20th Century Fox. After Paris fell to the Nazis, Adler and his wife departed for Marseilles, where they were aided out of the country and over the Pyrenees Mountains and into Spain by famed American journalist Varian Fry (who helped over 2,000 refugees to escape). Fry forged passports for the couple, who fled on foot, along with their dog. The couple eventually made their way to Portugal, where they were able to book passage to New York on separate ocean liners, the SS Siboney and the NEA Hallas in October and November of 1940.

Resettled in New York City, Adler worked as a graphic designer, illustrator and easel painter. He died in New York in 1963. In 1964, he was awarded a posthumous exhibition at the Goethe House in New York, NY.