Ferdinand Kitt studied painting from 1907-14 at the Wien (Vienna) Academy of Fine Arts and contemporaneously art history. He joined the Vienna Secession in 1919 acting as their president 1926-29. After the “Anschluss” of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938 he became a member of the Munich Secession only to return to the Vienna Secession in 1946. For almost 20 years, Kitt was a teacher at the Wiener Frauen-Akademie (Vienna Art School for Women and Girls). He worked primarily in the areas of portrait, genre and landscape painting and as a design draftsman for tapestries and sgraffito, using a style that has been described as moderate Expressionism. In World War II his studio in Wien was completely destroyed and he moved to Lake Wolfgang near Salzburg. His son, Ferdinand Kitt, Jr., (1919-1973) became a well-known architect in Austria, while his daughter Adelheid (1920-?) was a well-known art historian.