Konrad Cramer was born and raised in Wurtzburg, Germany in an artistic family. His mother was an opera singer and an uncle was a well-known painter of still lifes. Cramer trained as an artist at the Karlsruhe Academy under Ludwig Schmidt-Reutte and Ernest Schurth. He became interested in the German avant-garde early in his schooling as he was exposed to and encouraged by the experimental works of Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. An additional influence on Cramer's artistic development was the Cubist landscapes of Paul Cézanne.

In 1911 Cramer met and married the American artist Florence Ballin who was traveling in Germany that year. The couple first traveled through Germany, visiting the exhibitions and studios of the country's...