The Memory Factory introduces an English-speaking public to the significant women artists of Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, each chosen for her aesthetic innovations and participation in public exhibitions. These women played important public roles as exhibiting artists, both individually and in collectives, but this history has been silenced over time. Their stories show that the city of Vienna was contradictory and cosmopolitan: despite men-only policies in its main art institutions, it offered a myriad of unexpected ways for women artists to forge successful public careers. Women artists came from the provinces, Russia, and Germany to participate in its vibrant art scene. However, and especially because so many of the artists were Jewish, their contributions were actively obscured beginning in the late 1930s. Many had to flee Austria, losing their studios and lifework in the process. Some were killed in concentration camps. Along with the stories of individual women artists, the author reconstructs the history of separate women artists' associations and their exhibitions. Chapters covering the careers of Tina Blau, Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Bronica Koller, Helene Funke, and Teresa Ries (among others) point to a more integrated and cosmopolitan art world than previously thought; one where women became part of the avant-garde, accepted and even highlighted in major exhibitions at the Secession and with the Klimt group.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter One: Writing, Erasing, Silencing: Tina Blau and the (Woman) Artist’s Biography
Chapter Two: Elena Luksch-Makowsky and the New Spatial Aesthetic at the Vienna Secession
Chapter Three: Broncia Koller and Interiority in Public Art Exhibitions
Chapter Four: Rediscovering Helene Funke: The Invisible Foremother
Chapter Five: Teresa Ries in the Memory Factory
Chapter Six: Women as Public Artists in the Institutional Landscape
Chapter Seven: The Ephemeral Museum of Women Artists
Chapter Eight: 1900-1938: Erasure
Appendix: Biographies
Bibliography
Index