Franz Lerch (1895-1977)

Franz Lerch was born 1895 in Vienna. First he worked in an administration office of a building firm and then he served as a soldier in the First World War. In 1918 he began to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna at the classes of Alois Delug, Josef Jungwirth and Karl Sterrer. In 1927 Lerch became a member of the artists association Hagenbund and also of the Viennese Secession. In 1933 he married Steffi Kraus and travelled with her to Sicily. In the 1930s he made also study trips to Paris and the Netherlands. Because of the Jewish background of his wife they had to emigrate during the Nazi regime, they fled to Great Britain and then in the USA. Before the departure he destroyed a large part of his works. In New York Lerch worked for the design company Printex and painted only in his leisure time.

Franz Lerch died in 1977 in New York.