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Willy Colberg (*31) March 1906 in Hamburg † March 11, 1986 was a German painter, graphic artist and boat builder.

Life and work
Willy Colberg was born in Barmbek, grew up in a social-democratic craftsman’s family and studied boat building at Franz Mello from 1921 to January 1925. Subsequently, he went on a journey for two years, during which he reached Lake Constance. Already at that time he made first drawings. Colberg decided to become an artist and attended a drawing school in Karlsruhe in 1926. He then returned to his native city and began studying at the Landeskunstschule. From 1927 to 1930 he learned applied graphics with Willi Titze and nude drawing with Willy Habl and Willy von Beckerath. In the winter semester of 1932 he continued his studies.

Throughout his life, Colberg was a political person. At a young age he became involved with the Naturefriends and the Young Socialists. During the period of National Socialism he was considered close to the KPD and became a party member with his wife after the end of the Second World War. Artistically, he was connected to the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists of Germany, called ASSO. Colleague artists such as Rudolf Führmann, Emil Kritzky, Walter Stiller and others had founded a Hamburg branch in 1929 as an offshoot of this group of artists, which was founded in Berlin and appreciated in left circles.

After the Gestapo searched Colberg's apartment on the Alsterkrugchaussee in 1933 and interrogated the artist, Colberg fled to Kiel. In 1934, he received a four-week visa with which he could leave Germany via Italy and Greece to Cyprus. In 1935 he worked here for a year on an apple plantation. He then took over the management of a boatyard in Palestine, from where he sailed to Egypt. Colberg planned to travel on to South Africa, but was arrested by the English police in Port Said. Since he could not show a valid visa, he was deported to Germany.

In Hamburg in 1939 he married Anna-Marie Heitmann (1911-1996), named Ayong, with whom he got the daughter Antje in 1940. Colberg initially worked as a ship’s carpenter. Since an art collector stood up for him, he did not have to perform military service for the time being. Later he was a technical draftsman at Blohm & Voss. During a bombing raid in 1943, the apartment and studio were destroyed at the hop market. The complete work of Colberg, which had been created up to that time, was lost. Colberg was eventually conscripted for military service in the Navy. He was initially stationed in Stralsund and was involved in a fight in Italy. Here he joined local partisans and became an American prisoner of war.

After the end of the Second World War, Colberg returned to Hamburg. He worked as an advertising and press artist for the Hamburger Volkszeitung and as a stage painter for the film industry. Colberg was a founding mi