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

Vienna Secession The Vienna Secession (; also known as the Union of Austrian Artists or ) is an art movement, closely related to Art Nouveau, that was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian painters, graphic artists, sculptors and architects, including Josef Ho ...

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 Austrians, Austrian-Sudeten Germans, Moravian architect and designer. He was among the founders of Vienna Secession and co-establisher of the Wiener Werkstätte. His most famous architect ...

. In 1905, she married Viennese artist Koloman Moser, 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 (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement. His work helped define the Art Nouveau style in Europe. Klimt is known for his paintings, murals, sket ...

, 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). 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 ("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 brought to ...

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

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

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...

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, Ditha 1883 births 1969 deaths Wiener Werkstätte Austrian graphic designers Austrian women graphic designers