Self-portrait

Belonging to the second generation of German Expressionists, Walter Gramatté came of age during World War I, enlisting in 1914 at the age of seventeen. A year later, after being seriously injured and subsequently discharged, he enrolled in the Berlin Art School. Gramatté's experience of the war was reflected not in images of battle, but in the more than one hundred self-portraits he produced during his short life. He died at the age of thirty-two, as a direct result of his wartime injuries.