Hempel Willy

(Russia, 1905 – Greece, 1985)

He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kaliningrad in 1927-29. After graduating, he moved to Berlin and there he remained until the beginning of the World War II. He spent the war in Yugoslavia where he joined the partisans. In the post-war years he lived and worked on the islands of the Adriatic Sea. He was a co-founder of the Zen 49 Group (initially Gruppe der Ungegenständlichen,) founded on 19 July 1949 at the Stangl Gallery in Munich. After breakup of the group in 1957, he went to Greece and spent the rest of his life on the Greek islands of Rhodes and Paros.