The Forgotten Women of Viennese Modernism

Madame D’Ora

Dora Philiippine Kallmus was the first woman to be admitted on the theory courses of Vienna’s Graphic Training Institute. In 1905, she became a member of the Association of Austrian photographers and went on to establish her own studio in Vienna with Artur Benda. Working under the pseudonym Madame d’Ora, Kallmus established herself as a leading portrait photographer across Europe, with subjects including Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, Tamara de Lempicka, and Colette. She deployed a typically neutral background with few, if any, props. All focus was channeled on the sitter’s expression, with pristine lighting ensuring clear contours, detailed textures, and striking fabric folds.

The Wiener Werkstätte

In 1903, graphic designer Koloman Moser joined forces with architect Josef Hoffmann to establish the ‘Wiener Werkstätte’ (Vienna Workshop) — a large scale cooperative of artists and artisans pioneering modernist aesthetics, traditional craft, and the ‘total work of art’ or Gesamtkunstwerk, in which every element of an environment plays a part. While the male founders’ names have dominated the history books, women actually made up the larger number of this creative hub, among them painter and printmaker Mela Koehler, the designer Gisela Falke von Lilienstein, and graphic designer, Leopoldine Kolbe. Women’s presence and influence in the Werkstätte grew further still with the opening of textile and fashion divisions in 1909-10.

Vally Wieselthier was one of the leading figures of the Wiener Werkstätte’s ceramic department, specialized in bold and witty figurines embodying turn-of-the-century optimism and verve. In 1920, when the workshop’s new business director begun his campaign to introduce fixed salaries and production supervision, Wieselthier left in protest at the infringement of creative freedom. She returned to the Werkstätte seven years later, but left Austria permanently for the United States in 1933.

Find more in Vienna 1900 Complete, our sumptuous hardback edition of the Viennese modernism, curated by three scholars of the period and illustrated with the most outstanding and original examples of painting, poster design, fashion, photography, ceramics, silverwork, furniture and architecture.

Words by Eliza Apperly.