Hans Jaenisch was born in Eilenstedt, Thuringia, in 1907. After attending school, he went as a young man to Berlin, where he would spend most of his life. Self-taught, Hans Jaenisch belonged to the generation of artists caught up in the vibrantly diverse revolutionary tendencies of the first thirty years of the 20th century.

At first leaning towards a Cubist-Expressionist* style, Jaenisch joined the 'November Group' and showed work at twenty at Herwarth Walden's 'Sturm'. From 1929 Jaenisch taught at 'Der Weg', an art school. In the early 1930s Surrealist* elements began to surface in Jaenisch's work and continued to reverberate in later paintings.

While serving as a soldier in the second world war in Tunis, Jaenisch di...