Roland Dörfler was born in the Czech Silberbach on 14 February 1926 and attended the teacher training institute in Eger since 1941 for two years. In 1944 Dörfler was drafted to working service and infantry training in Prague and Budweis and was in French war captivity after a war deployment in the West. In 1948 Dörfler began to study with Fritz Griebel at the academy of art in Nuremberg and switched to Stuttgart in 1950 to continue his studies with Hans Meid, Manfred Henninger and Willi Baumeister. In 1956 Dörfler married the French Suzette Souviraa. One year later he accepted a teaching position for drawing at the academy in Stuttgart and was appointed professor for painting at the Kunsthochschule in Braunschweig in 1960. 1961/62 Dörfler joined the ‚Neue Württembergische Gruppe'. Beside his teaching he accepted orders for murals and wall installations, a.o. for the Kerschenstein school in Stuttgart-Feuerbach in 1956 and for the church St.Martin in Bad Orb in 1990. Already during his years of study Dörfler found his main subject in the human figure, which always dominated his artistic creation. In Dörfler's ‚alla prima'-painting the aesthetic body is less in the foreground than the human being in negation of a self-determined and self-confident idea of man. Emotions of pain, solitude and despair found their pictorial expression in an expressionistic body-language. Between 1969 and 1974 Dörfler mainly used constructive forms , e.g. the dice motif, to modify the subject human being in an exciting way. Dörfler's graphic works were in comparison to his painting more figurative and more narrative. In 1965 Dörfler received the art award ‚junger westen', posted by the city of Recklinghausen for a handdrawing. Several honours accompanied his artistic work: in 1984 Dörfler was awarded with the prize of the 8. British International Print Biennale of Bradford and the gift of honour of the Lovis-Corinth-prize of the Künstlergilde Esslingen, followed by an invitation to the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1988. Many of the artist's works are in ownership of German museums, a.o. the ‚Drei Figuren' (1975) at the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, the ‚Komposition mit Figuren' and the ‚Kreuzigungsszene' (1978) at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.