Emil Pirchan (1884-1957) was a pupil of Otto Wagner from 1903 to 1906; In 1908 he moved to Munich, where in 1913 he opened his own art school for set design and applied graphics.

He was named director of set design at the Bavarian State Theatre in 1918 and following this, in 1921 he was called to the State Theatre in Berlin under the same title. In 1932 Pirchan moved to Prague as head of set design at the German Theatre; in 1936 he was invited to Vienna as a professor at the Academy of the Visual Arts. Later he would take on the directorhsip of the Master School for Set Design until his death in 1957 and worked as a set designer at the Burgtheater and the State Opera in Vienna.

His oeuvre includes 1,500 graphic works and his theatre work appeared to be around 500 complete designs. He also wrote technical literature, novels and artist monographs, including the very first monograph about Gustav Klimt. Pirchan’s was considered a pioneer with his designs adn he is commonly credited as one of the forerunners of the reform movements of the early twentieth century.