[2] After that, between 1949 and 1953, he studied painting at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts where his teachers included Wilhelm Lachnit and Rudolf Bergander.
[2] In 1959 Metzkes settled on the southside of Berlin, moving into a studio-workshop apartment in 1960: he embarked on a career as a free-lance artist, identified in some quarters by the soubriquet "The Cézannist of Prenzlauer Berg".
During the ensuing 27 years he contributed illustrations for a further fifteen books, mostly by high-profile authors, including Marino Moretti, William Heinesen, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franz Fühmann, Christa Wolf, Hermann Bang, August Strindberg and even Theodor Fontane.
[2] In 1976 he won the Arts Academy of East Germany's Käthe Kollwitz Prize, and state-level official recognition in the form of the Banner of Labor.
The next year his work was the focus of an exhibition at the National Gallery in (East) Berlin, "Harald Metzkes – Two decades of Pictures".