Born in St. Louis, Missouri, of Czechoslovakian and German-Jewish ancestry, Albert Bloch spent his formative years in the Midwest. He first studied art at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts (now part of Washington University). Like many of his contemporaries, Bloch earned a living from commercial art, and between 1905 and 1908 he worked as a caricaturist and illustrator for William Marion Reedy’s literary and political weekly The Mirror. Noticing Bloch’s artistic talent, Reedy provided him with a monthly stipend to study abroad. At the beginning of 1909, Bloch sailed for Europe.
Between 1909 and 1921, Bloch lived and worked mainly in Germany, making brief visits to other countries on the Continent and to America. His decision to settle in Munich, then a thriving art center, rested largely on his language skills—he had learned German from his parents. Although Reedy pressed Bloch to attend classes at the Royal Bavarian Academy in Munich, Bloch never enrolled, preferring instead to take lessons from painters working in the academic style outside the academy.