Kurtfritz Handel was born as a Romanian/German in Râmnicu Vâcea. He had the opportunity to deal with the craft of sculpture as a high school student. He attended an art school in the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg). After the subsequent study of sculpture and art history at the "state academy of arts" (staatlichen Akademie der Künste) where he graduated as a master student undter the tutelage of Artur Vetros, he worked as an art teacher and freelance artist in Sibiu (Hermannstadt). In 1985, he moved to the Federal Republic of Germany. Here he worked as a principal and teacher at the youth art school in Nürtingen.

Handel's artistic work includes landscape and animal sculptures, portraits, figurative sculptures and drawings. Impressive about his work is his understanding of forms, which is marked even in broad abstraction with a deep sense of humour.