Brücke 1912 Pechstein

Otto Mueller (16 October 1874 – 24 September 1930) was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement.

Mueller was born in Liebau (now Lubawka, Kamienna Góra County), Kreis Landeshut, Silesia. Between 1890 and 1892 he was trained in lithography in Görlitz and Breslau. From 1894 to 1896 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden under Georg Freyer and continued his study in Munich during 1898. He left Munich's academy after Franz von Stuck classified him as untalented.

His early works are influenced by impressionism, Jugendstil and Symbolism. However, much of his early work is lost due to his own destruction of his early pieces. When he settled to Berlin in 1908, his style became more expressionist. In 1910, he joined 'Die Brücke', a Dresden-based group of Expressionist artists, and in 1911 worked and traveled with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein, and Erich Heckel. He continued his close association with Kirchner and Heckel after Brücke disbanded in 1913. At the same time Mueller also had contact with the artists group 'Der Blaue Reiter'.