Koloman Moser

Koloman Moser (1868-1918), artist and designer, was at the center of the lively cultural upheavals in early 20th-century Vienna that would play an important role in the birth of modern design. He studied painting and drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and worked for some years as a graphic artist before becoming in 1897 one of the founding members of the Viennese Secession, an artistic movement co-founded together with his friend Gustav Klimt and the architects Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich. The group set itself in antithesis to the official interpretation of art then in vogue at the Künstlerhaus in Vienna and offered young artists a new space in which to exhibit their works, the Secession Building, designed by Olbrich and decorated by Moser. Moser's style, initially greatly influenced by the Art Nouveu-inspired floral decorative motifs that were the most popular during the Secession, then evolved towards severe geometric grids that anticipated the Baauhaus, clearly evident, for example, in the furnishings designed for the Purkersdorf sanatorium designed by Josef Hoffmann. Moser was the protagonist together with Hoffmann of another important initiative, the foundation of the Wiener Werkstätte, which took place in 1905 thanks to funding from Fritz Wärndorfer. In these workshops, of which Moser was artistic director until 1908, objects of artistic craftsmanship were produced which anticipated the practices of modern design as it would become established in the twentieth century. Moser signed furniture, glass objects, fabrics, book graphics and much more, to then dedicate the last years of his life mainly to painting. Today some of his creations are reissued by Gebrüder Thonet Vienna (furniture), Backhausen (fabrics) and Woka (lamps).