VIENNA.- The turbulent biography of Elisabeth Wild (née Pollak, * 1922 in Vienna, † 2020 in Panajachel, Guatemala) reads like a recap of the twentieth century. Marked by flight and displacement, national identification and disidentification, her life seemed constantly to hit the reset button. This is not least evident in her oeuvre, which is highly diverse in terms of the media she used—including painting, sculpture, and textile design as well as collages and subsequent installations. MUMOK presents her first retrospective exhibition, turning the spotlight on her late works as well as her previously unknown early works.

With her first major presentation in Vienna on view at the MUMOK, Wild’s story comes full circle. At the heart of the conceived exhibition is her artistic development, which reads like a ride through twentieth- and twenty-first-century art history. Early and late works are juxtaposed on two of mumok’s exhibition levels. Though the two creative periods seem contrary at first glance—one might assume they are not from the same artist—a closer inspection reveals kinships that bespeak the artist’s early interests. Collaged works display architectural and scenic fragments as well as masklike traits or geometric patterns. The collages thus combine Wild’s early landscapes, portraits, and textile designs in a purely abstract form.

Elisabeth Wild (1922 - 2020) was born in Vienna, Austria and died in Panajachel, Guatemala. Through her small-scale collages she crafted wonderfully modern visions with harmonic compositions and an architectural sense of space.

Born in Austria, Wild fled to Argentina during WWII with her parents. As a young girl she took painting classes in Vienna such as in Buenos Aires and later worked in textile design before she married the textile industrialist August Wild. In 1962 the family escaped the regime of Juan Peron and found a new home in Basel, Switzerland. Wild opened an antique shop at St. Johannstor which became the outlet for her creativity at the time and also supported her and her family financially. In 2007 Wild joined her daughter Vivian Suter in the remote Guatemalan village of Panajachel. Though she worked in various media throughout her lifetime, Wild’s early work in textiles was a precursor to the collage she settled into later in life and adds a layer of explanation to the almost-quilted cohesion of these works.