After graduating from school in 1912 Ernst Geitlinger moved to New York with his parents. He decided to become a stage painter and enrolled at the Academy of Design. He began working as a drawing teacher at the gallery owner Puzzi Hanfstaengel's painting school in 1914. Geitlinger went to Munich in 1922 where he began studying painting under Carl Kaspar at the Akademie der Künste. He left the Akademie in 1931 and participated in exhibitions of the "Deutscher Künstlerbund", the "Neue Sezession" and the "Juryfreien". Geitlinger was banned from exhibiting works during the National Socialist regime and his art was considered "degenerate". Attempts at emigrating to the USA, the UdSSR and to Columbia were unsuccessful, so Geitlinger retreated into inner emigration. He enjoyed an active presence in the art and exhibition world in post-war Germany and was one of the co-founders of the Munich artist association "Neue Gruppe". The Munich artist associations took over the exhibition management at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 1950 and Geitlinger played an important role in promoting abstract painting. Geitlinger was appointed professor of painting and graphic arts at the Munich Akademie in the winter semester of 1951/52, a post he held until his 70th birthday. After that he founded a private painting school in Kurfürstenstraße 1 in Munich, which developed into a popular forum for his pupils and a centre of intellectual and artistic exchange. Ernst Geitlinger died aged 77 in his house in Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg. Geitlingers work is a reflection of the artistic development in the 20th century. It ranges from the "Neue Sachlichkeit" to the lively "lyricism" of the 1930s and 1940s, from a structured composition in the 1950s to analyses of the relationship between space and surface.