Edith "Ditha" Moser (1883–1969) was an Austrian artist and an influential member of the artistic group

Vienna Secession The Vienna Secession (german: Wiener Secession; also known as ''the Union of Austrian Artists'', or ''Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs'') is an art movement, closely related to Art Nouveau, that was formed in 1897 by a group of Austri ...

Early life

Edith "Ditha" Moser was born in 1883 as Edith Mautner Von Markhof to a wealthy Austrian industrial family. From 1902 to 1905 she studied at the Academy for Applied Arts in Vienna as a guest student under

Josef Hoffmann Josef Hoffmann (15 December 1870 – 7 May 1956) was an Austrian- Moravian architect and designer. He was among the founders of Vienna Secession and co-establisher of the Wiener Werkstätte. His most famous architectural work is the Stoclet P ...

. In 1905, she married Viennese artist

Koloman Moser Koloman Moser (; 30 March 1868 – 18 October 1918) was an Austrian artist who exerted considerable influence on twentieth-century graphic art. He was one of the foremost artists of the Vienna Secession movement and a co-founder of Wiener Werks ...

, and they remained married until his death from cancer in 1918.

Career

Along with her husband, her former professor, and other famous artists such as

Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's prim ...

, Moser took part in the

. In the late 1800s, the world saw new artistic trends involving progressive design theory that presented themselves in a variety of movements and styles across countries. As the modern world moved forward, artists desired new ways to both express and withdraw from these changes. In Vienna, which had become a leading city for these new artistic styles, this appeared in the Vienna Secession where many leading artists at the time sought a new place where they could exhibit and explore their work away from the Academy for Fine Arts (eventually building the

Secession Building The Secession Building (german: Secessionsgebäude) is an exhibition hall in Vienna, Austria. It was completed in 1898 by Joseph Maria Olbrich as an architectural manifesto for the Vienna Secession, a group of rebel artists that seceded from the ...

). Artists in the movement wanted to bring artwork back to everyday life and would hand make their work over new manufacturing techniques. To further their movement, Moser helped her husband found a new group known as the

Wiener Werkstätte The Wiener Werkstätte (engl.: ''Vienna Workshop''), established in 1903 by the graphic designer and painter Koloman Moser, the architect Josef Hoffmann and the patron Fritz Waerndorfer, was a productive association in Vienna, Austria that bro ...

, literally meaning "Vienna Workshop," where secession artists could collaborate on their work. They became popular with wealthy clientele in Vienna who liked their modern objects. However, their attempts to expand the workshop to other cities (such as Zurich, Berlin, and even New York City) failed and, after the workshop increasingly lost relevance, it closed down in 1932. Much of Moser's artpieces followed the same themes of the Wiener Werkstätte creating her own smaller objects. She began producing work by creating calendars as New Year's gifts for friends. She often included imagery from her own family life, as seen in one Tarot card deck where she incorporated likenesses of her own family members to portray a family story where everyone dressed as a different tarot card for a family wedding anniversary. She also displayed a fondness for toy soldiers in her tarot cards as well as biblical and mythological themes. She often made her work in the

Jugendstil ''Jugendstil'' ("Youth Style") was an artistic movement, particularly in the decorative arts, that was influential primarily in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to a lesser extent from about 1895 until about 1910. It was the German counterpart of ...

style (meaning "youth style") which was the German equivalent of

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

that influenced many members of the Vienna Secession. This is visible in her use of simple forms and straight lines. Despite her establishment as a graphic designer, her work output was still relatively limited and not many have survived. She stopped producing work entirely after World War I, and died at the age of 86.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moser, Edith 1883 births 1969 deaths Austrian artists Wiener Werkstätte Austrian graphic designers