Ferdinand Stransky's talent for drawing was discovered early on. He joined the restoration
workshop at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna as an apprentice in 1919. After a four-
year apprenticeship, Stransky worked as a restorer while also painting. In the 1930s,
Stransky's paintings came to the attention of the art historian couple Tietze. Through
Georg Ehrlich, he was accepted into the Hagenbund, of which he was a member in
1937/38 and which also offered him an exhibition forum. Stransky's subjects were mainly
figures and landscapes, with the world of work playing a special role in his oeuvre. Strong
movement in the brushwork, bold colours and exciting spaces are characteristic of his
work. After the Second World War, the artist was a member of the Vienna Secession from
1946 to 1952 and from 1969 onwards. Stransky was self-taught in painting. His
involvement with various trends in modern painting - cubism, painterly expressionism, for
example - had a stimulating effect. For him, the creation of a picture was a struggle with
the material rather than a constructive, intellectual act. Stransky's later pictorial creations
sometimes moved away from the representational and moved closer to abstraction.