Norbertine Bresslern-Roth

The paintings and drawings of Norbertine Bresslern-Roth (Graz, 1891–1978) were already highly sought during her lifetime: on the one hand her naturalistic depictions of animals and on the other hand her idealised nude depictions of humans symbiotically united with the animal world and vegetation of the Orient, Africa and the South Sea region. Also her coloured linocuts created from 1921 onwards, in which she mainly took animals as her theme in every facet imaginable, were widely spread throughout Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia.

This exhibition aims to work out new positions of the artists oeuvre and reflect it on an art- and contemporary historical basis. Showing a representative selection of her oil paintings, watercolours, gouaches, drawings and linocuts, which are partly found in museums all over the world, but are mostly in private hands, the exhibition not only examines the influence of other animal painters from Dachau to Schönbrunn in Vienna, but also deals with the untypical appreciation of a woman in a male-dominated genre. Focus will also be on her activities as an illustrator of novels, fairy-tales, legends, animal stories and Austrian regional poetry and her contributions to childrens literature in particular as reflected in the shifts in aesthetics and politics, ranging from Jugendstil, through her artistic work that conformed to the system during the Nazi period, right up to the post-war period.

Curated by Christa Steinle