Printmaker and teacher Peter Baer was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany in 1924 and aged twelve followed his family to London, where his father Hermann established an antiques shop in Mayfair. In 1939 the family was interned as 'enemy aliens' for six months at Huyton Camp, Liverpool. In 1948, Baer was naturalised and enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.
In the 1950s he was associated with the 'Kitchen Sink' painters and exhibited at the Beaux-Arts Gallery, Mayfair, also making etchings at Birgit Skiölds's Print Workshop in Charlotte Street. Later, Baer assisted with the day-to-day running of the Curwen Studio in Plaistow and worked as a printmaker himself from 1968 onwards. Peter Baer died in 1996 in his north London home.
