Otto Rudolf Schatz was born on January 18th 1900 in Vienna. Between 1915 and 1918 he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, where Oskar Strnad and Anton von Kenner were his teachers. After his military service in 1918 Schatz came back to the Kunstgewerbeschule, but after three months he left that school. He worked as a gardener, house painter and as a draftsman for a factory. Finally he decided to be a freelance artist.
 
In the 1920’s and 30’s Otto Rudolf Schatz illustrated numerous books and worked for various social democratic newspapers and publishers. Since 1925 he was a member of the “Bund Österreichischer Künstler”, from 1928 to 1938 of the ”Hagenbund“ and since 1946 a member of the Viennese Secession. Soon after Austria was occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 Schatz received an employment ban and emigrated with his Jewish wife Valerie Wittal to Brno and in 1939 to Prague. During the war he worked as a laborer; over that period he painted pictures in small format. In 1944 the couple was interned, but later it was liberated by Soviet troops. In 1945 Schatz returned to Vienna, where he was particularly encouraged by Viktor Matejka, the former city councillor in charge of cultural affairs. Before and after the war he made several journeys that took him to Italy, France, England, Switzerland, the Balkans, Asia and the USA.
 
Otto Rudolf Schatz has an extensive oeuvre. Besides his numeros woodcuts he also painted pictures in watercolor and oil; he also created frescoes and mosaics on buildings. Schatz exhibited his works in the “Neue Galerie” of the art patron Otto Kallir-Nierenstein in Vienna and in the “Hagenbund”-Exhibitions. The works show different subjects in the style of Expressionism and “Neue Sachlichkeit”. On April 24th 1961 the artist died in Vienna.