Erwin Pokorny studied history and art history at the University of Vienna. In the 1990s he worked as a freelance researcher and curator at the graphic collections of the Albertina and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and the City Museum Nordico in Linz. He specialised in German and Netherlandish drawings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Dürer and Bosch. He has published about iconographic questions with a preference for odd topics (drolleries, mythical creatures, witches and outcasts). Lately, he has lectured at Innsbruck University and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on the history of drawings and prints.