Otto Eichinger was born in 1922 in Vienna, Austria. He died in 2004. He was the third generation of artists in the Eichinger family painting in this realistic style. His father, also a portrait painter, was Erwin Eichinger.

Otto Eichinger said he painted with a horse hair, which although was an exaggeration, his point was that each small wrinkle line of the faces in his portraits were painted with extreme precision and care. He used a magnifying glass to assist in creating the smallest details in his paintings. This was the last in the line of Eichinger artists who painted.

Otto’s son became a musician instead of a painter ending the line of painter artists of portraits in the Eichinger family lineage.

Otto Eichinger attended the art academies of Vienna, Austria and Munich, Germany. Afterwards he went on to study Lithography but decided to pursue painting as a career like his father.

Otto continued the tradition and specialized in finely detailed portraits of Bavarian men, Cardinals and Rabbis.

Submitted by Jacob Frank, whose source is the Arnot Gallery