VENNA.- As an outstanding representative of Viennese Kineticism, Erika Giovanna Klien (1900–1957) soon shot to international fame. Her passion for the theater and dance led to innovative stage designs and complex depictions of bodies in motion. From 1929 Klien lived in New York, which resulted in an increased focus on urban spaces and social issues. The exhibition at the Lower Belvedere shines a spotlight on every facet of the painter, graphic designer, and art educator’s oeuvre and presents the latest research on her life and work.

General Director Stella Rollig: Some forty years since Erika Giovanna Klien’s first solo exhibition in a museum, this show presents a contemporary perspective on the artist and invites visitors to learn about new facets of her creative output. In the University of Applied Arts Vienna—Collection and Archive and the Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici in Rome, we found two very competent partner institutions for this exhibition project.

Klien is considered the most important representative of Kineticism, an abstract art movement developed in the first half of the 1920s at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts that focused on the “rhythmic existence of things.” Under Klien’s analytic gaze, complex sequences of movement showing flying birds, rotating machines, or dancing bodies were transformed into masterly Simultanistic compositions. In 1929 the artist moved to New York, where she earned a living as a progressive art educator. It was then at the latest that she proved herself to be a precise observer of technological progress and the machine-driven dynamism of the modern metropolis, while the economic crisis and world war heightened her awareness of social issues.





The exhibition does not present Klien’s oeuvre according to the chapters of her biography but reflects the central themes in her work and illustrates how the artist created such a compelling and diverse, at times also interdisciplinary, body of work over the course of almost four decades, the full extent of which deserves our attention and greater visibility, according to the curator Verena Gamper.

The solo show reveals continuities where her biography might lead us to expect breaks. For instance, Klien was interested in the theater and dance throughout her life, and her study of children’s creative expression was another constant in her oeuvre. Consistent in her choice of subjects but open to inspiration from various disciplines and cultures, Klien developed a rich and diverse body of work—even beyond Kineticism

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 1919. Klien began her studies at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna under Franz Čižek. It was in his “Ornamental Morphology” class 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 S. Dreier for her collection. 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 Walter, who was raised by foster parents and who would later became a famous pianist, 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. 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.

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.