She was born in Vienna in 1906 to an aristocratic family. Her father Edmund von Motesiczky was a talented cellist and keen huntsman. Her mother, Henriette von Lieben, came from one of the most wealthy and cultured families in the Habsburg Empire. They had donated many of the artworks in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and, in their palatial salon opposite the opera, Hugo von Hofmannsthal had read his first poems. Their own art collection at the family's country estate in Hinterbrühl was formidable. After leaving school aged only 13, Marie attended art schools in various locations around Europe, including Vienna, Paris (at the Montparnasse Painting Academy) and Berlin. In 1928, Max Beckmann invited her to join his masterclass at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, where she honed her craft and the two became lifelong friends. Motesiczky spent the next 10 years developing her craft but, as her family was partly of Jewish descent, she had to flee the Nazi annexation of Vienna in 1938.