Franz Cižek (12 June 1865 – 17 December 1946) was an Austrian genre and portrait painter, who was a teacher and reformer of art education.

Franz Cižek was born František Čížek on June 12, 1865 in Litoměřice (Leitmeritz in German), in northern Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic.

He was a student of the German painters Franz Rumpler, Josef Mathias von Trenkwald, and Siegmund L'Allemand.

He was impressed by their creativity and showed the work to fellow artists at the university, who encouraged him to start an art school for children.

[2] Another artist, Emmy Lichtwitz Krasso, was an assistant from 1933 to 1935, and later went to India where she started a children's art movement in the Mumbai schools.