Marigolds

One of the most influential figures of the Secession, Koloman Moser is counted amongst the many artists who, along with Gustav Klimt, left the Künstlerhaus in 1897 to establish the Vienna Secession. Using a groundbreakingly modern approach, Moser went on to design the spatial concept of more than half of the exhibitions organized at the Secession until 1905. He also produced about 140 illustrations for the Secession’s magazine Ver Sacrum, which was published between 1898 and 1903. In 1899 Moser was appointed as a teacher at Vienna’s School of Applied Arts and was given the position of professor of decorative painting and drawing a year later in 1900. Together with Josef Hoffmann and the industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer, he founded the Wiener Werkstätte in 1903. Onward from 1907, Moser turned increasingly toward painting and designing stage sets. His pictorial repertoire contained landscapes and symbolic compositions as some of his favorite subjects, in addition to decorative floral motifs such as the work at hand.