Edmund Gwerk was a visual artist born in 1895 in Banská Štiavnica of a small-town family of German origin, his grandparents immigrated to the town for mining. His father was a respected master tailor and his mother was a worker in a tobacco factory. She died when Gwerk was four years old. When Gwerk was eight he accidentally lost an eye while playing, and later lost his ability to see spatially.

     He was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest from 1914−1919 where he studied not only art, but natural sciences, music, theater and philosophy. Following the end of the World War, Gwerk became interested in the new ideas coming from Russia. Marxism and Communism suddenly seemed to him redemption after the failure of European civilization. In 1919 he participated in the Budapest Commune, an attempt at a proletarian coup, but it was quickly suppressed. His lifelong support of Communist ideas put him at odds with other artists and intellectuals in his country.

     From 1920−1921 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and later completed study trips in Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Paris, Rome and Florence. During his life, he made many foreign trips to Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France and the USSR. Between 1938 and 1942 he studied art history at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava.

     Gwerk was a very educated and collected person − he devoted his whole life to expanding his knowledge. He spoke German, Hungarian and partly French fluently. He was also interested in philosophy and music, and he was close to the teaching of Buddhism.

     Gwerk was an important representative of Slovak painting in the interwar and postwar period. He painted portraits, figures and especially landscape works with the subjects of Banská Štiavnica and its surroundings (he was especially fond of Sitno). He was also a participant of the anti-fascist movement and preparations of the SNP.

     Gwerk's painting gradually crystallized into the form of a late expressionism tinged with mysticism. His early and mature landscape paintings express the dynamics of the shapes, the elemental power of nature, and the effect of the distinctive color of the images - the form of swirling clouds and mountains, the dynamic energetic curves in nature.

     His works are in National Gallery of Slovakia and in the galleries of several Slovak cities.

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