Michael Coudenhove-Kalergi was born in Prague in 1937. Since 1945 the family lived in Vienna. The young man studied between 1952 and 1958 at the school of arts and crafts in Graz under Rudolf Szyszkowitz and afterwards until 1964 at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna under Josef Dobrowsky and Karl Gunsam. During his studies Coudenhove got acquainted with the Viennese artists of ‚Magic Realism' and participated regularly in their group exhibitions. His playful, extremely graphic style was dominated by a fairytale-like mannered alienation. Formally orientated to Austrian baroque, Alfred Kubin's dreamworlds and Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando's poetry of dazzling decadence, the artist mainly created fantastic vedutes. Oil paintings, watercolours, brush-and-ink drawings and etchings of European city views, historical architecture and landscapes. They were populated by insects, fish, birds and mythical creatures or combined with historical trains and cars. In Coudenhove's work the interest in topographical details and the delight in telling about the psychologicalisating element always dominated and humour, farce and the fascination of the morbid stood in the fore. In 1980 the painter received the ‚Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst'. Today, Michael Coudenhove-Kalergi mainly lives in Japan.