Artist of the day

Monday, April 27, 2026

Artist of the Day, April 27, 2026 : Olga Wisinger-Florian, an Austrian painter (#2511)

Olga Wisinger-Florian (1844 – 1926) was an Austrian impressionist painter, mainly of landscapes and flower still life. She was a representative of the Austrian "Stimmungsimpressionismus [de]" (Mood Impressionism), a loose group of Austrian impressionist painters that was considered avant-garde in the 1870s and 1880s.

Wisinger-Florian was born and lived all her life in Vienna. She began private art lessons at age 19. Frustrated with her progress and the quality of the instruction, she followed her parents' wishes and trained as a concert pianist with Julius Epstein. From 1868 to 1873 she had some success as a pianist, until a hand injury forced her retirement from the piano.

At age 30, Wisinger-Florian returned to painting, and devoted herself wholly to its study. She studied first with August Schaeffer and then with Emil Jakob Schindler. When she was 35 she was included in an exhibition of the Viennese Art Association. She was one of only nine women asked to contribute to Die österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie, a 24-part encyclopedia of the lands and peoples of the Austro-Hungarian empire—of the other women included, Wisinger-Florian was the lone Austrian.

From 1881 she regularly showed paintings at the annual exhibitions mounted at the artist's house and later often showed at Vienna Secession exhibitions. The work she showed at the Paris and Chicago international exhibitions earned her worldwide acclaim. Wisinger-Florian exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts and The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. The artist, who was also active in the middle-class women's movements of the time, was awarded numerous distinctions and prizes.

Wisinger-Florian's early paintings can be assigned to what is known as Austrian Mood Impressionism. In her landscape paintings she adopted Schindler's sublime approach to nature. The motifs she employed, such as views of tree-lined avenues, gardens and fields, were strongly reminiscent of her teacher's work. After breaking with Schindler in 1884, however, the artist went her own way. Her conception of landscapes became more realistic. Her late work is notable for a lurid palette, with discernible overtones of Expressionism. With landscape and flower pictures that were already Expressionist in palette by the 1890s, she was years ahead of her time.

Despite her late start as a painter, Wisinger-Florian enjoyed renown in fin de siècle Vienna. Her work was included in the 2019 exhibition City Of Women: Female artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938.

© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Olga Wisinger-Florian or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Ms. Olga Wisinger-Florian

Motif from the Prater, c.1880

A Bouquet of Forget-me-not, c.1880-90

The Waterfall in the Village, c.1880-90

Castle courtyard of the Deutschlandsberg ruins, c.1880s

A Girl in the Garden, c.1881

Lilies, c.1881

In the Farmhouse Garden, c.1884

Autumn Leaves, c.1894

In the Countryside, c.1895

Postal Inn in Karlsbad, c.1895

White Roses, c.1895

Dämmerung (wayside shrine in a corn field), c.1896

c.1899

Falling Leaves, c.1899

A Wisteria-Covered Pergola in the Garden of Villa Haas in Abbazia, c.1900

River in an Autumnal Landscape, c.1900

Rustic Garden in Blossom, c.1900

Still Life with Pansies, c.1900

Rose Garden at Grafenegg, c.1904

Blooming Apple Trees, Spring, c.1906

Plane Tree Alley in Autumn, c.1909-10

In the Garden, c.1910

An Elm-Lined Promenade in Euxinograd, c.1911

The Elm-Lined Promenade in Euxinograd, c.1911

A Bouquet of Poppies, c.1926

Aulandschaft, c.1926

Interior with a View of a Festively Decorated Table, c.1926

The Goose Girl, c.1926

Evening Mood, Motif from the Park of H.R.H. Archduke Joseph in Fiume

Saturday, April 25, 2026

Artist of the Day, April 25, 2026 : Balthasar Klossowski, (Balthus) a French painter (#2510)

Balthasar Klossowski (1908 – 2001), also known as Balthus, was a Polish-French modern artist. He is known for his erotically charged images of young girls, and the dreamlike quality of his imagery.

Balthus was a reclusive painter of charged and disquieting narrative scenes. Skirting avant-garde movements such as Surrealism, he appropriated the techniques of such antecedents as Piero della Francesca and Gustave Courbet to depict the physical and psychic struggles of adolescence. Casting viewers as voyeurs of brooding pubescent female subjects, he scandalized audiences with his first gallery exhibition, at Galerie Pierre, Paris, in 1934. In the sixty years that followed, Balthus cultivated a self-taught classicism—evident in the subject matter and technique of his interior portraits, street scenes, and landscapes—that ultimately served as a framework for more enigmatic and subversive artistic investigations.

Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola) was born in Paris. His first major museum exhibition was at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1956. Other important exhibitions include Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; A Retrospective Exhibition, Tate, London; 39th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 1980; Balthus in Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1980; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Ar, 1984; Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1993; Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1995; Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2001; Time Suspended: Paintings and Drawings, 1932–1960, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2007;

Early on his work was admired by writers and fellow painters, especially by André Breton and Pablo Picasso. His circle of friends in Paris included the novelists Pierre Jean Jouve, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Joseph Breitbach, Pierre Leyris, Henri Michaux, Michel Leiris and René Char, the photographer Man Ray, the playwright and actor Antonin Artaud, and the painters André Derain, Joan Miró and Alberto Giacometti.

© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Balthasar Klossowski or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only