Koloman Moser

Koloman Moser (1868-1918), Austrian painter and designer who worked in the art nouveau style, a central figure in the Vienna Secession and a founder of the Wiener Werkstätte. He studied painting with Otto Wagner at the Vienna Academy, and later studied design at the School of Applied Art, where he eventually became a professor. Moser initially worked as an illustrator, and by the 1890s he had developed a distinctively rectilinear art nouveau style. His associates included Joseph Maria Olbrich and Josef Hoffmann. His introduction to Gustav Klimt led, in 1897, to the founding of the Vienna Secession, an antiestablishment association of modern artists and architects whose objectives included promoting the integration of the decorative and fine arts and introducing the work of foreign artists to Austrian audiences.

The Secession (so called after its break with the conservative and provincial Künstlerhaus that had dominated Vienna’s artistic life) held exhibitions in which progressive English and other European designers such as Walter Crane and Charles Rennie Mackintosh also participated. It published its own review, Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). Moser designed stained glass and decorations for Olbrich’s Secession building in Friedrichstrasse (where the Secession’s exhibitions are still held) and provided furniture, textile, and glass designs for various manufacturers, while continuing his graphic work (notably for Ver Sacrum), book illustrations, and posters. His style progressed quickly from the sinuous art nouveau of French and Belgian inspiration to the elongated and spare geometric, in which patterns of squares are often a feature. His furniture designs presage the luxurious surface decoration and the angularities of art deco.

In 1903, with Hoffmann and Fritz Wärndorfer, Moser founded the Wiener Werkstätte, an art workers’ cooperative inspired by C. R. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft in England. It became the powerhouse of Austrian Jugendstil (art nouveau). Nearly all the Wiener Werkstätte’s early designs—for metalwork, jewelry, leatherwork, furniture, toys, and bookbindings—were by Moser and Hoffmann. Among Moser’s other designs were those for coins and banknotes (for the Austrian government), postcards, and even dresses. He left the Werkstätte in 1907 and for the last ten years of his life was active mainly as a painter.