Oskar Fischinger

«Fischinger was born in Gelnhausen, on June 22, 1900. He studied organ buildung and then mechanical engineering in Frankfurt am Main and successfully completed his engineering studies in 1922. [...] In 1923 Fischinger went to Munich, where he worked with Louis Seel at the ‹Münchner Bilderbogen› and made several films of his own, all of which are now lost. He worked with Alecander Lászlo from 1925 to 1926 and designed the projections for his partner’s color piano. [...] In Berlin he worked for UFA and was sought out for his expertise in special effects for films such as Lang’s ‹Frau im Mond› (Woman in the Moon). [...] He worked intensively on sound experiments and production of synthetic sound and was the first ot use a three-color system (‹Gasparcolor,› an invention of the Hungarian Béla Gaspar) in avant-garde films. [...] He received sporadic assignments [after his emigration to the USA in 1936], but a contract with Welles came to nothing because the company went bankrupt. He took up painting and received very modest support for himself and his family through a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. ‹Motion Painting No. 1› led to a falling out with the foundation. Aside from a few commercials he did not make any films in the twenty-year period from 1947 until his death. [...] He died in Hollywood on January 31, 1967.»

(source: Goethe-Institut (ed.), The German Avant-Garde Film of the 1920’s, exhib. cat., München, 1989, p. 28f.)