After an apprenticeship with the woodcarver and altar builder Kepplinger in Linz, Ferdinand Andri attended the Staatsgewerbeschule in Innsbruck, then studied at the Vienna Academy with Berger and Lichtenfels and completed a three-year apprenticeship at the art school in Karlsruhe. Ferdinand Andri was a co-founder of the Vienna Secession. From 1899 to 1900 and again from 1905 to 1906 he was president of this artists' association. At the World Fair in St. Louis in 1904 he decorated the Austrian pavilion with murals. During the First World War, the artist was active as a war painter. In 1919 he was appointed professor at the Vienna Academy, where he established a school of fresco painting, and in 1932 he took over the master school of mural painting. "Based on the Secession style, he combines architectural pictorial composition with strong colouring and emphasises the subject through firm outline and stylisation." Andri was a landscape, genre and portrait painter. His main subject was the human being. The monumental power of his works had a stimulating effect on his students. Ferdinand Andri was also a sculptor and created large-format colour lithographs and woodcuts, among others for "Ver sacrum". The award of the Waldmüller Prize, 1944, and the Goethe Medal for Art and Science honoured his artistic work.
Literature
L. Hevesi, Acht Jahre Secession. März 1897 - Juni 1905. Kritik-Polemik-Chronik, Wien 1906, S. 385ff; F. A. Lutz, Oeuvrekatalog Professor Ferdinand Andri, Akademie Wien 1941; Ferdinand Andri. 1871 - 1956. Maler, Bildhauer, Graphiker, Lehrer, Kulturamt St.Pölten 1971; Nachschlagewerke: Thieme-Becker, Bénézit, Schmidt, mit Lit.