Carlo Pietzner

Born in 1915 in Vienna, Austria, Carlo Pietzner graduated from the Vienna Academy of Applied Arts in the 1930s, where he became friends with George Kalmar. He met the ideas of Rudolf Steiner through a youth group gathered around Dr. Karl König. He fled to Prague in 1938, where he became friends with Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. He then moved to Switzerland and then England. Although he was interned in Canada during World War II, he resettled in Scotland in 1941 to assist Dr. König in establishing the first Camphill Village for disabled children. In 1954 he helped begin a Camphill Village in Glencraig, Ireland,  and then in 1961 moved to the United States to found the Camphill Villages at Copake, N.Y. and Downington (Beaver Run), PA. Especially in America until his death in 1986 he continued his varied and prolific artistic creativity as painter, sculptor, stained glass window designer, poet, playwright, and author.