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Erika Giovanna Klien
All Is Movement
The Belvedere is dedicating an extensive solo exhibition to the work of Austrian-American artist and educator Erika Giovanna Klien (1900–1957). A leading exponent of Viennese Kineticism, Klien achieved international acclaim early on in her career. Her passion for theater and dance found expression in innovative set designs and complex depictions of bodies in motion. Klien moved to New York in 1929, and this new environment manifested itself in her increasing engagement with urban spaces and social issues.
An exhibition of the Belvedere, Vienna, in collaboration with the University of Applied Arts - Collection and Archive, Vienna, and the Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, Rome.
Curated by Verena Gamper
Co-curator: Veronica Liotti
Assistant Curator: Johanna Hofer
The Exhibition
In autumn 2026 the Belvedere is paying tribute to the work of artist Erika Giovanna Klien (1900–1957) in an extensive solo exhibition. The foremost exponent of Viennese Kineticism, she drew and painted fascinating depictions of quivering birds in flight, dancing bodies, and rotating machines. Her compositions were based on the observation, analysis, and arrangement of complex movements, whether these were natural or technical in origin. It was especially after moving to New York in 1929 that Klien emerged as an astute observer of technical progress and modern city life with its ever-faster pace.
While she was studying in the class of avant-garde educational reformer Franz Čižek at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna, Klien also trained as an actor. Her interest in the stage and dance finds frequent expression in her work, for example in the Kinetic Puppet Theater around 1925, or in the play The Masses from the late 1940s. A further thread in Klien’s creative output, encouraged by her education with Čižek and her many years teaching art, was her interest in children’s art. Finally, social criticism and reflections on modernity converge in her depictions of the social realities of workers’ lives, which she produced both in the 1930s and in the last years of her career.
The exhibition at the Lower Belvedere sheds light on all aspects of the oeuvre of this painter, graphic artist, and art teacher, who had a passion for theater and dance, and presents the latest research on her life and work.
Biography
Erika Giovanna Klien was born on April 12, 1900, in Borgo Valsugana in Trentino, the daughter of kindergarten teacher Anna Klien and stationmaster Franz Klien. After her father’s job was transferred several times, the family moved to Vienna in 1918/19. Klien began her studies at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna under Franz Čižek. It was in his course on ornament that Viennese Kineticism developed. Klien emerged as one of the most famous exponents of this movement with her works appearing in international exhibitions and being acquired by Katherine Dreier for the Société Anonyme. Having also trained as an educator in Čižek’s class, Klien started teaching art at the Elizabeth Duncan School in Salzburg Klessheim in 1926. After the birth of her son, who was born out of wedlock and was raised by foster parents, Klien moved to New York in 1929. Her hopes of continuing the promising successes of her early career were only partially fulfilled: The economic climate forced Klien to concentrate on teaching. She taught art at Stuyvesant Neighborhood House, the New School for Social Research, the Dalton School, and the Spence School, sometimes juggling multiple jobs. The last of these engagements came to an end before World War II, and Klien did not resume her teaching career until 1946 at Walt Whitman School. She mainly produced commercial graphic designs at this time. Weakened by illness, she gave up teaching in 1951, creating a final body of work revisiting themes from the 1930s. Erika Giovanna Klien died in New York in summer 1957.
