He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna under Alois Delug and Christian Griepenkerl.
Equally adept at both landscapes and portraits, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1908.
Building upon the deep, dark lines of drypointing, Sterrer began to cut his landscape compositions to their essentials.
During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Sterrer worked and traveled extensively in Germany and Austria.
Today, examples of Sterrer's original prints and paintings are housed in the collections of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, the Dresden Gallery and the Austrian Academy in Vienna.