ISBN: 0500093067 9780500093061

Category: Art / European

Page count: 248

Around 1900, the Viennese art scene was a hive of creative activity, and at its center was one of the most versatile artists of the age: Koloman Moser (1868-1918). He spent his childhood haunting the workshops of the school where his father worked, and the techniques that he mastered there gave him the perfect foundation for the arts and crafts movement that he helped to found and foster.Trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule, where he later taught, he broke away from the establishment and in 1897 co-founded the Vienna Secession, whose first president was Gustav Klimt. Moser began his career with fashion drawings and book illustrations, but soon he was working in ceramics, furniture, jewelry, fabrics, and all aspects of interior design. In 1903, together with his friend and colleague Josef Hoffmann, he founded the Wiener Werkstatte, whose workshops set trends that spread far beyond the boundaries of Vienna.As teacher, artist, and craftsman, Moser had an immense influence on the tastes of his time, and his talents ranged from stained glass to the design of stage sets and postage stamps. He devoted the last years of his life to painting, and in recent times his reputation in this field has steadily grown.Maria Rennhofer, the biographer of Klimt, provides a comprehensive account of Moser's life and work, and of the flourishing artistic environment that he did so much to create and shape.