Richard Hirschbäck’s first contacts with expressing himself through art came already in his childhood when he was sent to the Benedictine boarding school Edmundsburg in Salzburg. There, he started to draw, as a means to relieve his homesickness that he was intensely feeling as a result of this experience. The acquaintance of Rudolf Hradil directed him to systematize his immense need to draw, which led him to dedicate himself to meticulously studying the human body through live models. This disciplined work in the form of regular practice and detailed studies laid a firm foundation to all his subsequent work. Upon the advice of Hradil, in 1956 Richard Hirschbäck went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, under Prof. Albert Paris Gütersloh. During his studies, he would often escape to Burgenland, where a series of small-format landscapes originated. These were exhibited by Ernst Fuchs in the gallery in Millöckergasse in 1958.