Otto Lambert Grever: 1878-1936

Landscape and portrait painter, lithographer, and designer of theatrical posters and billboards

A fine collection of theatrical posters by American artist Otto Lambert Grever are held by the Museum of the City of New York.

The following biography of Grever was published in 2000:

Landscape and portrait painter, lithographer, and designer of theatrical posters and billboards, born in Cincinnati (Hamilton) in 1878. A son of Joseph Grever, a language instructor at Hughes High School, Grever attended the Cincinnati Art Academy from 1893 to 1895 and from 1897 to 1901, while working as a lithographer for the Henderson and Donaldson Lithograph companies. Ambidextrous, he was capable of working with both hands simultaneously, and, according to one of his relatives, “could do the work of six.” About 1904 he moved to New York, where he spent twenty years with the Miner Lithographing Company, creating posters for motion pictures and stage attractions. He died in Phoenix Arizona, January 21, 1936, a victim of tuberculosis. Twenty years later, the Museum of the City of New York exhibited thirty of his best-known posters, part of a collection of fifty-one donated by the artist’s widow. (source: Cincinnati Artists File, Cincinnati Art Museum Library)   (1.)

Biographical/Historical Note: Theatrical poster artist, lithographer; New York, N.Y. Grever was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, May 16, 1878. He studied art at the Cincinnati Art Academy under Frank Duveneck and Vincent Nowottny. He began his career in lithography in Cincinatti, eventually settling in New York City in 1904 and working for the H.C. Miner Lithographic Co. where he specialized in theatrical posters for 29 years.

Donated by Grever’s daughter, Barbara Ann Grever, 1993-1994.

1.  Grever, Otto Lambert: in: ‪Jeffrey Weidman‬: Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900: A Biographical Dictionary: ‪Kent State University Press‬, 2000: p. 352