[1][2] He was initially strongly influenced by Expressionism and later primarily created works with biblical themes as well as city and landscape images.
He is also called a cosmopolitan painter because he created his paintings in Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Polynesia and the United States.
Starting in 1911, he studied under August Brömse, Franz Thiele, Vlaho Bukovac, and Karl Krattner at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague.
The group initially included other students of Brömse such as Josef Hegenbarth, Emil Helzel, Norbert Hochsieder, Julius Pfeiffer and Leo Sternhell.
Mary Duras, Walther Klemm, Moriz Melzer and Emil Orlik later joined the group, which existed until 1925.
Here, he was able to organize an exhibition in the New Gallery for visiting artists Hilde Goldschmidt, Friedrich Karl Gotsch and Hans Meyboden.
[4] He then stayed in Paris and Montrouge and then lived again in Prague, where his first marriage was to the sculptor Mary Duras in 1927, with whom he had already spent time in New York in 1923.
At the end of the summer of 1934 he undertook his second voyage via Suez, Ceylon, Singapore, Sydney and New Caledonia to Tahiti, which resulted in the pictures of the second South Sea cycle.
In 1936 he spent a month visiting countries on the Black Sea, including the USSR, Bessarabia, Sevastopol and Yalta in Crimea.