Otto Illies

After that, he took courses in art history at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and attended classes in nude painting led by Heinrich Knirr.

From 1903 to 1908, he took further classes in nude painting from Ludwig von Hofmann (who later became a friend and supporter) at the Grand-Ducal Saxon Art School, Weimar.

After completing his classes, he exhibited with the Berlin Secession and established a studio community with his former classmate from Munich, Hans Delbrück.

The following year, he used some of it to build a villa in Falkenstein (an outlying district of Hamburg), designed by the architect, Walther Baedeker (1880-1959), where he established his studio.

On the 50th anniversary of his death, in 2009, the Gleimhaus in Halberstadt, which maintains a large part of his estate, held a major retrospective.