Animalier

Emma Schlangenhausen's graphic depicts a peacock nest hidden among tall greenery and flowers. In the centre of the composition, there is an elongated silhouette of an adult bird stretching its neck and closely observing its surroundings. The work is one of the artist's typical works, combining decorativeness with symbolic meaning. The graphic, made at the turn of 1926/1927 using the woodcut technique (on a soft wooden block cut along the grain), was printed on Japanese tissue paper. It was published by the Munich publishing house Verlag für moderne Graphik Bavaria specialising in modern art.Emma Schlangenhausen, an Austrian artist, was born in 1882 in Hall in Tyrol and died in 1947 in Großgmain near Salzburg. She studied in Graz, at the Styrian National Academy, and Vienna at the School of Arts and Crafts. The teacher there, Alfred Roller, had a significant influence on developing her art form. Between 1903 and 1905, she deepened her studies with Koloman Moser, an outstanding representative of modernism, and from 1910 with Cuno Amiet, a versatile pioneer of Swiss modernism. She also made study trips to Paris, where she took lessons from Maurice Denis at the Akademie Ranson. In 1919, she settled in Salzburg and created woodcuts. Her work, based on the contrast between black and white, is influenced by her studies with artists representing various trends in art at the turn of the 20th century, from Art Nouveau to Art Deco. She took up various themes: animalistic, floral, landscapes, views of architecture, and genre and biblical scenes. Between 1932 and 1933, she designed frescoes for the Franciscan monastery in Salzburg, destroyed in 1938. She was active in women's artistic associations. She co-founded the Wiener Frauenkunst, an association of women artists and craftswomen, which functioned from 1926 to 1956, and the Wassermann (Aquarius) groups. She included her experiences and reflections on art in two publications: Ein Farbenspiel (A Game of Colours) in 1919 and Lux in tenebris (Light in the Darkness) in 1929.

Ewa Gwiazdowska