A male and a female figures (study for 'Golgotha')

Otto Greiner first trained as a lithographer in his home town of Leipzig before going to the Munich Art Academy on a scholarship in 1888. An exhibition of Max Klinger's work there was a key experience for him and made him want to meet the artist, who was already known far beyond the borders of Germany, in person. In 1891 he visited him in Rome, became friends with him and soon enjoyed his support. Their relationship has often been interpreted by art critics as a teacher-student relationship, an interpretation that both artists reject. Like the German Romans before him, Greiner found his second home in Italy. From 1898 he lived permanently in Rome, took over Klinger's former studio in the immediate vicinity of the Colosseum and enjoyed great respect within the German artists' colony. In 1915, however, Italy's entry into the First World War forced him to return to Munich, where he died of pneumonia in 1916. Although Greiner was a graphic artist and draughtsman, he also tried to make a name for himself as a painter. Most of his monumental paintings deal with mythological subjects and mainly show nudes in southern landscapes (e.g. Odysseus and the Sirens (formerly Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig), Hercules at the Omphale (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) or Prometheus (National Gallery of Canada, Toronto)). Countless studies in pen, charcoal, red chalk, gouache and coloured pencil testify not only to an immense meticulousness in the preparation, appropriation and mastery of pictorial motifs, but also to stupendous craftsmanship and a well-considered use of graphic means. More than any other artist of his time, Greiner enjoyed depicting the human body in the most intricate views, which is why his excellent portrait and nude drawings can be considered the essence of his art.