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Broncia Koller-Pinell

An Artist and Her Network

Broncia Koller-Pinell (1863–1934) was more prominent on the international art scene than virtually any other female artist associated with Viennese Modernism. By the age of twenty-seven, she was already exhibiting at the Vienna Künstlerhaus. Her greatest successes came later with the Kunstschau group founded by Gustav Klimt. In 2024 the Belvedere is dedicating an exhibition to Broncia Koller-Pinell featuring not only her major works but also delving into the painter’s network and her activities to promote art. By including Broncia Koller-Pinell’s artistic milieu, we can trace her stylistic development from the late nineteenth-century Munich School to Impressionism and the New Objectivity in the 1920s. Interactions and influences will be demonstrated in the paintings and graphic art by artists such as Robin Christian Andersen, Anton Faistauer, Albert Paris Gütersloh, Karl Hofer, Koller-Pinell’s daughter Silvia Koller, Koloman Moser, Egon Schiele, Heinrich Schröder, and Franz von Zülow. The exhibition will also explore the role of Broncia Koller-Pinell and her husband Hugo Koller as patrons of the arts. 

Curated by Katharina Lovecky and Alexander Klee.

In cooperation with
Impressions

Biography

 

Broncia (Bronislawa) Pineles (1863–1934) was born into a Jewish family and spent her early years with her four siblings in Sanok on the River San in Galicia (now Poland). She was the second youngest child of Klara, daughter of a landowner, and Saul Pineles, an entrepreneur in the construction industry and later a factory owner. In 1873 the family moved to Vienna. Broncia Pineles began her artistic training at the age of eighteen. In 1888 she moved to Munich to study at Ludwig Herterich’s Damenakademie. Influenced by the Munich-based Impressionists such as Fritz von Uhde, the artist adopted the tonal, open style of painting that would characterize her first works. Broncia, who had changed her surname to Pinell at the start of her artistic education, returned to Vienna in 1890 and regularly contributed to exhibitions at the Vienna Künstlerhaus and the Munich Glaspalast. In 1893 she exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair. 

In 1896 the artist married Hugo Koller, a physicist and qualified physician, after the couple met in the circle of the feminist activist and artist Rosa Mayreder. Her husband’s career took them to Hallein and Nuremberg before they finally settled in Vienna in 1902. Broncia Koller-Pinell now readily absorbed the influences of Viennese Modernism: The dark colors from Munich were replaced by a light, dry style of painting and the planar compositions of the Secessionist artists. In 1908 she exhibited at the Kunstschau, organized by Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann. She would retain close ties with the group until the 1930s. As a woman of means, she was able to put the motto of the Kunstschau group into practice: “art should permeate life.” Hence, not only was she a customer of the Wiener Werkstätte but she also engaged Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann to furnish her apartments in Vienna and her home at Oberwaltersdorf. 

Koller-Pinell was particularly close to the painter Heinrich Schröder from Krefeld and the two artists shared a studio from 1906. In 1918 she began forging a friendship with Egon Schiele that was cut short by Schiele’s premature death that year. Furthermore, Koller-Pinell was actively involved in the foundation of new artist associations: the New Vienna Secession and the Sonderbund. Together with artists like Anton Faistauer, Robin Christian Andersen, and Albert Paris Gütersloh, she exhibited with the Salzburg group Wassermann in 1919. She continued to demonstrate her artistic versatility into old age. Silvia Koller’s studies with Carl Hofer prompted an exchange of artistic ideas that also sparked Broncia Koller-Pinell’s interest in the movement New Objectivity.