Franz Heckendorf was a German painter and graphic artist of the Expressive Realism who underwent a blooming period during the time of the Weimar Republic. Heckendorf's artistic education began at the young age of 15, when he completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter. Afterwards, he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Shortly thereafter, he already exhibited some of his works at the Berlin Secession. He primarily painted landscapes and still lives that clearly show a Mediterranean influence from the impressions of his travels to Italy and Croatia during the 1920s and 1930s.

During the Third Reich he was imprisoned for ten years because he had helped a ...