Announcement board for the Internationale Kunstschau in Vienna, 1909

This announcement board, executed as a color lithograph, was created by the painter, graphic artist and designer Bertold Löffler (1874–1960) for one of the most important art exhibitions of Viennese Modernism, the Internationale Kunstschau 1909. As with the 1908 Kunstschau, Löffler was once again charged with creating the exhibition poster, which in this case was mounted onto a piece of cardboard to serve as an announcement board. The artist settled on an extremely slender vertical format and an anthropomorphic landscape motif: The rock, which appears to be clad in a light brown garment, was created in such a way that the hands and fingers are hinted at in white. Löffler used white also for other parts of the skin, including the neck and face, while he chose a flower meadow to symbolize the hair. This anthropomorphizing approach to landscapes was characteristic of Austrian Expressionism, and especially of the work of Egon Schiele (1890–1918).

MR, 2021