# Kurt Peiser artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/kurt-peiser/
Profile generated: 2026-05-09T11:12:00.000Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1887-01-05
- Death date: 1962-03-13
- Nationality: Belgian
- Common media: oil painting, lithography, etching, drawing, printmaking

## About Kurt Peiser

Kurt Peiser (1887–1962) was a Belgian painter, lithographer, etcher, and draftsman born in Antwerp to a family of German ancestry. Active from roughly 1907 until his death, he became known for depicting the hardships of working-class and marginalized life, earning the nickname 'the painter of miseries and the underworld.' After World War I he settled in the Brussels area and continued producing paintings, prints, and drawings that explored café culture, poverty, and social outcasts. His graphic output — lithographs and etchings — runs alongside a substantial body of oil paintings and works on paper. Peiser's work remains of interest to collectors of early twentieth-century Belgian art, particularly those drawn to socially engaged realism and the Antwerp–Brussels artistic milieu of the interwar period.

## Common works and media

Collectors most frequently encounter Peiser's oil-on-canvas or oil-on-panel paintings of café interiors, street scenes, and figure studies depicting everyday hardship. His printed oeuvre includes etchings and lithographs, often issued in limited editions, with subjects ranging from urban nightlife to portraits of the working poor. Drawings in charcoal, ink, or graphite on paper also appear on the market, typically figure studies or preparatory works related to his painted compositions.

## Market and appraisal context

Kurt Peiser's work appears regularly at auction, with over five hundred recorded lots spanning paintings, prints, drawings, and graphic works. Oil paintings typically attract the strongest interest, while etchings and lithographs provide a more accessible entry point for collectors. Provenance, condition, and subject matter — especially his characteristic social-realist scenes — can all influence value. The variant spelling 'Peizer' appears in some older catalogues, so searching under both forms is advisable for a full market picture. Appraisal should account for comparable Belgian-school auction results and, where available, expert certificates of authenticity.

## Appraisily data basis

This artist page draws on identity records from the Getty Union List of Artist Names (ULAN), VIAF, the Library of Congress Name Authority File, and the RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History), alongside the artist's dedicated catalogue website. Appraisily combines this biographical research with public auction records, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lot data when those records are available, to give collectors a grounded starting point for understanding an artist's market context.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2536774
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500161904
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/19638250/
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr2006005183
- RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History): https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/62417
- Kurt Peiser: http://www.kurtpeiser.be