Diether Kressel is among the leading German contemporary graphic artist. Diether Kressel studied art at the Hamburg Landeskunstschule in the 1940s where he developed his characteristic figurative style. Paintings by Diether Kressel focus on objects or still-life-like arrangements that never are plain effigies, but rather symbolic and surreal exaggerations. Diether Kressel achieves these effects by, for instance by depicting withering flowers, a cake with a piece missing or a typewriter with keys that have been torn out. The same can be said about his portraits and self portraits, which depict people in a mirror or like a "memento mori" with a skull. His drawings and subtle graphic works, mostly etchings and expressive woodcuts, are not less eloquent, either. Numerous exhibitions, for instance in the Hamburg Kunsthalle and the 'Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf' are proof of the artistsic rank of Diether Kressel, who was honored with, among others, the Edwin-Scharff-Prize.