Anny Dollschein attended Friedericke von Koch’s private painting school in Graz, starting in 1915, initially not intending to persue a career as an artist. It was only after the apheaval that came to her and her suddenly impoverished family as a consequence of World War I, that she started systematic artistic training. She attended Anton Marussig’s life-drawing night class and enrolled at the State Art Achool (Landeskunstschule) in Graz. In 1920, Dollschein joined vanguard artists’s association Freiland, whose aim it was, quite like the Bauhaus, to unify separate art genres with a greater gesamtkunstwerk approach.

She joined the ranks of the Graz Puppet Theatre (Grazer Marionettentheater) and was critically well-received as a puppeteer. Due to her difficult financial situation, she also worked as a governess, and it wasn’t until the 1930’s that she was once again able to focus more on her artwork. In 1930 she visited Paris for the first time and even moved there for the time from 1932 to 1933 in order to study at André Lhote’s painting school. Having returned from Paris, she went on to study with Alfred Wickenburg in Graz. From 1938 inward, she shifted her focus to working as an applied graphic artist, alas adapting to down-to-earth Nazi aesthetics for fear and uncertainty.