As the son of a Protestant pastor, Krcal grew up in Bregenz under conservative circumstances. The decision to become a painter came after meeting the French impressionist Charles Palmié in 1907. After graduating from high school, Kracl traveled to northern Germany, where he dealt intensively with landscape painting. He then went to Munich to study painting and art history at the Academy there. Among his teachers was Franz von Stuck. In 1911 Krcal went to Paris, where he made friends with Cubists and Fauvists and got to know important painters such as Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall. In Paris he worked mainly as a stage designer at the opera. During the First World War, Krcal was forcibly interned in southern France for three years and managed to flee to Switzerland in 1917. This stay and several trips through northern Italy shaped Krcal's style of painting: the influence of the Milan group Novecento and the Pittura Metafisica prepared the artist for Magic Realism, to which he devoted himself completely from the 1930s. In 1926 Krcal returned to Bregenz, where he joined the artist group "Der Kreis" and exhibited frequently even during the Nazi regime. Initially, Krcal had high expectations of him and hoped for a teaching position. Only later did he recognize the nature of National Socialism and broke with it.