Wotruba Depot and Study Room

Fritz Wotruba is born on April 23 in Vienna, the youngest of eight children. His parents are Hungarian housekeeper Maria Kocsis and Czech tailor Adolf Wotruba.

Trains in an engraving and stamping workshop in Vienna until 1926.

Studies sculpture at the Vienna School of Applied Arts under Anton Hanak and Eugen Steinhof. Conflicts with the teaching staff lead to Wotruba’s being suspended in 1929.

First solo exhibition at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, followed by his participation in the International Sculpture Exhibition in Zurich. Until 1938, further solo presentations and participation in exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1932, 1934 and 1936, the Austrian Art Exhibition in Paris and Austrian Painting and Sculpture in the 20th century in Bern in 1937.

Exile in Switzerland for several months after the suspension of the parliament and the foundation of the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg dictatorship in Austria. Returns to Vienna.

Exile in Switzerland, mostly in Zug.

Wotruba is appointed to the Academy of Fine Arts and returns to Vienna, where he becomes an important voice in the cultural discourse of the postwar years.

The presentation of his work at the Musée national d'art moderne in Paris marks the beginning of his extensive international exhibition activities, including further participations in the Venice Biennale in 1948, 1950, 1952 and 1972, in documenta II, 1959, and III, 1964 in Kassel, in world exhibitions in Brussels, Seattle and Montreal, in open-air exhibitions in London, Arnhem, Carrara and Antwerp and in important exhibitions in Paris, New York and São Paulo, as well as numerous solo presentations in Europe and the USA. 

Correspondent of the Salon de mai, a Parisian anti-Nazi artist league.

Artistic director of Galerie Würthle on Weihburggasse in Vienna until 1964. Wotruba’s exhibition program, which focuses on Austrian and international contemporary art, is intended to drive the city’s cultural reconstruction.

Commissioned to produce Large Figure Relief for the Austrian Pavilion designed by Karl Schwanzer for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels.

Designs stage sets and costumes for various Sophocles dramas and Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen in collaboration with director Gustav Rudolf Sellner until 1967.

First comprehensive solo exhibition in Vienna in Karl Schwanzer’s former World’s Fair pavilion, which had opened the previous year as the Museum of the Twentieth Century (now Belvedere 21).

Commissioned to design the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Vienna-Mauer on the basis of a sculptural proposal dating from 1967. The church is built between 1974 and 1976 to plans developed by Fritz Wotruba and architect Fritz Gerhard Mayr.

Fritz Wotruba dies in Vienna on August 28.

The artist's widow, Lucy Wotruba, opens the ‘Wotruba House’ in Vienna.

Following the death of Lucy Wotruba, stewardship of the artist’s estate passes to the Fritz Wotruba Association, and, as of 2007, to the Fritz Wotruba Foundation.

The Fritz Wotruba Foundation loans Fritz Wotruba’s estate to the Belvedere. The Wotruba Depot and Study Room opened on the lower level of today's Belvedere 21.

The Fritz Wotruba Estate becomes part of the Belvedere´s holdings.