[2] He earned a living by painting clocks, for which he developed a meticulous technique.
[1] In 1925, he participated in the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) exhibition in Mannheim which brought together many leading "post-expressionist" artists, including George Grosz, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, and Georg Scholz.
[3] His painted self-portrait entitled Fading Spring (1926) is representative of his style.
In it, the artist is seated at a worktable covered with precisely painted tools, machine parts, and plants.
"An inexplicable sense of threat exudes from the plants and objects bathed in gleaming light", according to Sergiusz Michalski, who compares Heise's fixation on natural details to the Pre-Raphaelites.