He studied art in Vienna and worked as an illustrator in Prague before coming to the United States in 1939 on the eve of World War II.
[5] Known as a colorist, Pachner's work includes satiric drawings, erotic figurative, biblical Judaic and Christian themes, photomontages and paintings of great color intensity.
[6] About his paintings, Pachner said, "I want, in each work, the world, like my countryman Mahler, the whole pie, not just one triangular wedge of it, but all of it in all of its contradictions, paradoxes, ironies, unbearable sorrows, indescribable joys, tragic comedy, farce, pathos and drama, both authentic and fraudulent.
Robert Martin, former art critic for the Tampa Times, once remarked that Pachner's work evidence "…an existential vision of life lived on the trembling brink of pain, and the knowledge of one's own mortality."
In writing about Pachner's 2012 Tampa Museum show, Paul Smart of the Woodstock Times[7] commented,[8] "The works are abstract on the surface, and yet narrative in the ways the artist uses his mastery of the medium to relate internal stories and experiences that are less emotional outbursts, as seen in classic Abstract Expressionist works, and more like psychological essays, or spiritual contemplations in paint.