Walter Trier was a Czech-German illustrator, best known for his work for the children's books of Erich Kästner and the covers of the magazine Lilliput.
Trier was born to a middle class German-speaking Jewish family on 25 June 1890 in Prague. In 1905, Trier entered the Industrial School of Fine and Applied Arts; he later moved to the Prague Academy. In 1906, he entered the Royal Academy, Munich, where he studied under Franz Stuck and Erwin Knirr. In 1910, at age 20, Trier moved to Berlin where he spent most of his career. There he became known for his caricatures and children's book illustrations.
Trier married Helene Mathews in 1913; a daughter, Margaret, was born a year later.
An anti-fascist, Trier's cartoons were bitterly opposed by the Nazis. In 1936 he emigrated to London. During the Second World War, Trier helped the Ministry of Information produce anti-Nazi leaflets and political propaganda. He and his wife became British citizens in 1947, the same year that they moved to Canada to be near their daughter, who had moved to Toronto with her husband in the late thirties.
Trier's works for the periodicals Simplicissimus and Jugend appeared in 1909. The next year, Otto Eysler, the editor of Lustige Blätter, persuaded him to move to Berlin and work for that magazine; Trier worked for Berliner Illustriete Zeitung as well.
In 1927/1929, Trier was introduced to Erich Kästner, and he illustrated Kästner's Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives).
Trier provided the front cover design for every issue of Lilliput from its start until 1949. Each time, the design featured a man, a woman, and a dog. The man and woman were usually young and almost always a couple, the dog was almost always black. It seems the original dog was Trier's. It was run over by a tram and killed, and after that Trier immortalised him in his Lilliput covers; the idea was light-hearted and the settings and styles varied considerably.
In 1949, Trier illustrated Kästner's children's novel Das doppelte Lottchen (Lisa and Lottie), which Disney then famously adapted into the 1961 film The Parent Trap starring Hayley Mills and its 1998 remake starring Lindsay Lohan.
On his arrival in Canada, Trier started work on illustrations for the company Canada Packers.
In 1934, Trier held a one-man exhibition in Prague.
Trier also created various murals: in the Kabarett der Komiker at Kurfürstendamm (1929, destroyed by the Nazis in 1933), on the liner SS Bremen (1929), and for Hoffmann–La Roche (Welwyn Garden City, 1938). He also staged designs for Spielzeug (1924) and The Bartered Bride (1931).
Trier held an exhibition of oils and water-colours in the University of Toronto in 1951, the year of his death.
The Walter Trier Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) Devoted to the work of Walter Trier features small rotating exhibitions of the artist's watercolours, drawings, paintings and sculpture along with satirical works on paper by other artists from the AGO collection.
In 1976, the AGO received a gift from the Trier-Fodor Foundation of over 1100 works by Trier and 345 folk toys. The gift was accompanied by an endowment to support the acquisition of humorous, satirical and illustrative art.
