Koloman Moser

Koloman Moser – Art studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna

Koloman Moser was born in Vienna on 30 March 1868. The son of an administrator at the Theresianum in Vienna, he showed his artistic talent at an early age and received his first official drawing lessons at the Decorative Arts school in Wieden. Although his father urged him to take a job at a perfumery, Koloman Moser secretly applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna where he studied under Franz Rumpler, Christian Griepenkerl and Josef Mathias Trenkwald. With the early death of his father, his essential financial support was lost, and the artist felt forced to take on commissions from newspapers to pay his way. He thus produced illustrations for the Meggendorfer Blätter, amongst others. His teacher, Trenkwald, also procured him a position as drawing teacher at Wartholz Castle, where he taught the children of the Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria. During this time, Moser met the painter Carl Otto Czeschka, ten years his junior, with whom he became friends. 

Moser was the first graphic artist to create art with a bearing on life

Koloman Moser attended the Decorative Arts school from 1893 to 1895 and after studying there under Franz von Matsch, also worked as a teacher himself from 1899. Alongside artists such as Gustav Klimt, Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos, he belonged to the founders of the Vienna Secession in 1897, whose letterhead vignette he designed, as well as the façade decoration of the Secession building composed of stylised owls and trees. His new art penetrated the immediate sphere of people’s lives and he established himself as the first true graphic designer in history with his distinctive doors, cabinets, stained glass church windows, textiles, jewellery, book covers and toys. He created an oeuvre that was not primarily on display in galleries and museums, but above all shaped the reality of life. This fitted well with Moser’s convictions, who belonged to the Vienna Secession not least because he did not know where to start with the outdated teachings of the academic art establishment and worked often for the theatre, designing stage sets, costumes, posters and programmes. 

Art design following strict geometrical principles

Koloman Moser fell out with the Vienna Secession and left together with the Klimt group in 1905. That same year he married the wealthy industrialist’s daughter Ditha Mautner Markhof, for whom he converted to the Evangelical faith, and on their honeymoon, the young couple visited Moser’s painter friend Carl Moll. Koloman Moser followed geometric principles in his artistic work, which often resulted in a black and white grid pattern characteristic of his designs. He intermittently headed the Vienna Workshops, founded by himself, Josef Hoffmann and the banker Fritz Wärndorfer, but here too there were disputes that enforced his departure as early as 1907. For the remaining years of his life, he turned away from arts and crafts and increasingly towards painting. 

Koloman Moser died in his hometown of Vienna on 18 October 1918.