Art historian of the so-called "New" or "Second" Vienna School group, known for his work on medieval and Baroque architecture. Sedlmayr studied architecture at Vienna's Technische Hochschule between 1918-1920. Thereafter he studied art history at the University of Vienna under Max Dvořák until Dvořák's death in 1921, and then under Dvořák's successor, Julius Alwin von Schlosser. His 1925 dissertation, written under Schlosser, was on the Austrian baroque architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach.