Artist in various media who developed his own techniques and who late in life pursued religious themes. He was born in Vienna, Austria, the only son of cultured parents, and briefly studied chemistry before concentrating on art. Although he studied for several months in 1920–1 with Anton Kolig in Noetsch, Frankl was mostly self-taught, not wishing to join any art movement. From 1922 he travelled in North Africa and widely in Europe and held several exhibitions; in 1930 the Munich Pinakothek bought a landscape and the art historian Hans Tietz wrote a monograph cataloguing Frankl’s etchings. Emigrated to England in 1938. Participated in the Venice and São Paulo Biennales and the Pittsburgh Triennale and in 1961 the president of Austria, which he occasionally visited, bestowed the title professor on Frankl.