In paintings, works on paper and poetry he explored existential questions and themes of contemporary social and cultural relevance, of spirituality and mythology.

Hugo Ascher's business was successful, and in 1909 the family moved into a villa in Niklasstraße 21–23 in Berlin-Zehlendorf, built by the prominent architect Professor Paul Schultze-Naumburg.

There, dean Ludwig Dettmann, co-founder of the Berlin Secession, had hired dynamic teachers who emphasized the value of a solid, practical education.

In 1914, Ascher and his friend and fellow painter Franz Domscheit (Pranas Domšaitis) presumably traveled to Norway and met Edvard Munch in Oslo.

[6] Released six months later, he survived the Nazi terror regime hiding in a cellar of a partially bombed-out building in the wealthy Grunewald neighborhood in Berlin.

Living close to the Grunewald, Berlin's expansive city forest, the artist observed and painted nature in different light, at different day-times and seasons, which he re-created in his studio.

He painted powerful images of trees and meadows, sunrises and sunsets, all devoid of human presence, in which sun and light are a dominant force.

His thick, bright pigments suggest both vibrant, life-affirming joy and, in the rough-hewn nature of his brushstrokes, a dark, inner anguish transformed into light.

The emotional narratives of his early work were replaced by economical landscape images and stylized flowers and trees, single-mindedly repeated at an intimate scale.

[17] During his lifetime, Ascher enjoyed only one large retrospective exhibition, which opened at Berlin's Rudolf Springer Gallery in 1969, a few months before his death.