Peter Baer was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany in 1924 and immigrated with them to London in 1936. He enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and was associated with the 'Kitchen Sink' painters in the 1950s. Later he experimented with prints at Birgit Skiold's workshop and was apprenticed at the Curwen Studio in Plaistow, east London, often working directly with notable British artists, including Henry Moore, John Piper and Barbara Hepworth.
Printmaker and teacher Peter Baer was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, Germany 28 March 1924. After Hitler's accession to the chancellorship, he and his sister were sent to school in Spain; however, on the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 they followed their parents to London, where his father Hermann established an antiques shop in Mayfair.
In 1940, following the policy of mass internment, the family were detained as 'enemy aliens' for six months at Huyton Camp, Liverpool, where Baer was employed as a draughtsman in an aircraft factory. In 1948, he became a naturalised British subject and enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London (1947–50) to study Painting and Lithography under Anthony Gross and Morris Kestelman, supporting himself with a variety of jobs, including as a gas lamp-lighter in Lisson Grove, London NW1. In the 1950s he was associated with the Kitchen Sink painters and exhibited at the Beaux-Arts Gallery, Mayfair, frequently visiting Birgit Skiöld's Print Workshop in Charlotte Street where he experimented with etching techniques. In 1959 Swedish-born Skiöld introduced him to printers Stanley Jones and Timothy Simon, founders of the Curwen Studio at the Curwen Press in Plaistow, east London who later employed Baer as a studio assistant until 1968. During this time, he was greatly helped by fellow émigré, Margarete Kroch-Frishman, and had the chance to work directly with several renowned British artists, including Henry Moore, John Piper and Barbara Hepworth, to proof images that were initially hand-printed from stone and zinc plates. In 1983 he contributed a print to a commemorative project, ‘A Tribute to Birgit Skiöld', to raise funds for the Birgit Skiöld Memorial Trust, in which 118 international artists donated an edition of 25 prints in a standard format, to create a three volume portfolio, incorporating written tributes, and poems by Edward Lucie-Smith and James Kirkup; the British Museum holds one of these editions. A talented and inventive printmaker himself, from 1968 onwards he specialised in landscape prints and paintings, revolutionising the medium by experimenting with mixed techniques of silkscreen printing, lithography and embossing. As his obituary in The Independent observes: 'Peter Baer was an artist foremost; then a master printer who enabled other artists to make their best original lithographs; and latterly a teacher of all aspects of printmaking who inspired his students' (5 April 1996).
Baer had numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Curwen Gallery (1961) and at the Camden Arts Centre (1981), the latter marking a period when he began to focus on painting as well as printmaking. He also showed with the Ben Uri Gallery and the Boundary Gallery, and was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition; his exhibitions were often reviewed by Alice Schwab in the AJR Information. From 1970 he taught printmaking at Hammersmith School of Art (later absorbed into Chelsea College of Art and Design), where Marc Balakjian, later founder of Studio Prints, was among his most noted pupils. After his retirement in 1989, he casually taught at the Camden Institute and continued to exhibit. In July 1993 his work featured in the exhibition German Refugee Artists in Great Britain (A Selection), held at 44 Acacia Road, London NW8, organised in collaboration with the German Embassy, and in 1994 he showed paintings, prints and drawings at the BBC in Wood Lane.
Peter Baer died at home in London, England on 22 March 1996 and is buried in Highgate East Cemetery. His work is held in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection and the British Museum. A memorial exhibition was held at Ben Uri Gallery in 1997 and in 2018 his work was featured in Ben Uri's exhibition Finchleystrasse: German artists in exile in Great Britain and beyond 1933-45, held at the German Embassy in Belgravia, to mark the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht and the Kindertransport initiative.
Peter Baer in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Peter Baer]