In spite of moderate assessments by his teachers Griepenkerl and Bacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he is considered as one of the most important representatives of the Austrian expressionist painting after 1918.
The end of the First World War, in which Schwarz -Waldegg had served as a volunteer in Galicia and Italy, marked a profound change in his style of painting that from now on turned towards expressionism.
He was a member of the Hagenbund and its president from 1926 and his works were exhibited both at home and abroad. Study trips through Austria, but also to Lake Garda, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin and Spain strongly shaped him and his art.
In the course of the “Anschluss” of Austria to Nazi Germany he was expelled from his studio. Until his deportation Schwarz-Waldegg lived and worked in the underground. In August of 1942 he was taken up by the Gestapo and murdered in the concentration camp Maly Trostinec near Minsk.
Many of his works are presumed to be missing. In 1968 his oeuvre was exhibited in the Viennese Secession. In 2009 the Jewish Museum Vienna organized a retrospective of the artist.
