Campendonk (1889-1957) was born in Krefeld, Germany, where he trained and worked as a painter and graphic designer. He was a member of the avant-garde Der Blaue Reiter group, along with Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky, from 1911 to 1912. When the Nazi regime came to power in 1933, he was among the many modernists condemned as degenerate artists, and prohibited from exhibiting. He moved to the Netherlands, where he spent the rest of his life working at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, first teaching decorative art, printmaking and stained-glass, then as the Academy Director.
While Campendonk was closely aligned with Der Blaue Reiter group for only a short period in the 1910s, his work from this time, which drew inspiration from the Belgian artist James Ensor as well as the Fauves (not unlike Kandinsky's), a combination of otherworldly scenes and folkloric style, was influential on the Surrealist movement.
