Encouraged by Ullstein Verlag, Liska went to the Academy of Arts in Berlin on Steinplatz as a student of Ferdinand Spiegel.[1] After World War II started, he was drafted as a soldier and an illustrator of the Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops.[1] His drawings of various battlefields were published in many magazines, even in neutral countries. Two of his sketch books in 1942 (Junkers) and 1944 (Hans Liska) are valuable collectibles today. From 1933 to 1944, he was an illustrator for the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, particularly for the special issue for the 1936 Summer Olympics,[3] and the propaganda magazine Signal. He made a drawing of the "greatest ateliers in the world", a gigantic hall, which was to be erected in Baldham near Munich by Josef Thorak after a decision by Albert Speer. This was supposed to be used for mighty group performances on the rally groundinNuremberg. The building looks like a living model (for example a horse), then a sound form, then a four-metre-tall model and finally a colossal horse statue. A second image shows the transport of ready-made horse sculptures to railway tracks for delivery to the deployment site.[4]
After the end of the war, Liska remained in Germany. In 1945 his Skizzenbuch aus dem Kriege, originally published in 1944 by Buhrbanck in Berlin in 1944, and all of its translations, was placed on the "proscription list of rejected literature" as number 17549.[5]
In 1948 Liska married Elisabeth (née Schmid, born 1922) in Scheßlitz near Bamberg. The couple had two daughters, Angelika and Gabriele.[6]
Liska's love of Mozart's opera brought him in connection with the picture series Zauber der Bühne, published in 1982. In his illustrated autobiography Malerisches Kulmbach (1985), Liska admitted to honouring the works of Max Ernst, Oskar Kokoscha and Pablo Picasso.
On 26 December 1983, Hans Liska had a stroke and died shortly afterwards.
Liska, Hans. In: Hans Vollmer (ed.): Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler des XX. Jahrhunderts. Volume 6, index H–Z. E. A. Seemann, Leipzig 1962, p. 220.
Paul Simsa, Hans Jürgen Sproß, Horst I. Wendt: Der Stern ihrer Sehnsucht: Plakate und Anzeigen von Mercedes-Benz; Zeitdokumente der Gebrauchskunst von 1900 bis 1960; ein Projekt der Mercedes-Benz Kulturförderung. 1st edition. Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 1995, ISBN3-89322-706-7, pp. 128–135.
Jakob Lehmann: Appell ans Humane. Zu Leben und Werk Hans Liskas. Aus Anlaß seines hundertsten Geburtstages. Colloquium Historicum Wirsbergense, Lichtenfels 2008 (= Kleine CHW-Schriften. Volume 3). ISBN978-3-87735-198-7.
Christof Vieweg: Hans Liska. Skizzen, Szenen, Situationen – Mit Mercedes-Benz in aller Welt. Delius Klasing Verlag, Bielefeld 2008, ISBN978-3-7688-2464-4.
^ abcdeManfred H. Grieb: Liska, Hans. In: Nürnberger Künstlerlexikon: Bildende Künstler, Kunsthandwerker, Gelehrte, Sammler, Kulturschaffende und Mäzene vom 12. bis zur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Walter de Gruyter, 2011, ISBN978-3-11-091296-8, p. 930 (books.google.de – preview).
^Lothar Henning and Karl-Georg Pfändtner: Unser Jahrhundert, Kunst in den Sammlungen der Stadt Bamberg, catalogue to an exhibition in the Dominican church 17 May to 30 September 1998, Bamberg
^Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung – Die 16 olympischen Tage. 1936, p. 36 (Archived version).
^Peter Adam: Art of The Third Reich. Harry N. Abrams, New York 1992, p. 195 (Archived version – originally published in Berliner illustrierte Zeitung issue 51, 1938).