Biography

Painter Henry Koerner was born in Vienna in 1915 to Jewish parents and trained there as a graphic designer. He immigrated to the United States in 1938 after Hitler came to power. He enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington and London. He began painting in 1943; in 1945, he was shipped to Germany to draw Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg Trials. Two years later, Koerner would have his first one-man show in Berlin, the first exhibition of an artist in post-war Germany. Between 1955 and 1967, Koerner painted (always from life) over 50 Time Magazine covers including covers of John. F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. He was honored, after his death in 1991, by retrospectives in the Austrian National Gallery and the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh. The Henry Koerner Center, serving emeritus faculty as a place to meet and work, opened at Yale University in January of 2003.