Silent Woman (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother), 1909

After attending the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, the artist Anton Kolig (1886–1950), born in Moravia, continued his studies at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. There, he met Egon Schiele (1890–1918) and befriended Sebastian Isepp (1884–1954) and Franz Wiegele (1887–1944), both from Nötsch im Gailtal in Carinthia. As a member of the Neukunstgruppe, co-founded by Schiele, Kolig exhibited this portrait of his mother Maria under the title “Silent Woman” in the Sonderausstellung Malerei und Plastik at the exhibition space of the Hagenbund in 1911. Wearing a plain dress, her arms crossed in front of her body, the figure in the full-length portrait is leaning against the right edge of the painting. The dark figure stands out from a brightly lit background, achieving a silhouette effect which Kolig enhances by emphasizing the contours. With its use of a narrow vertical format, this work is still strongly influenced by the aesthetics of Stilkunst, which prevailed around 1900.

AK, 2022