Curators Eva Klimpel and Stefanie Kitzberger guide visitors
through the exhibition Textile Transfers. The Collections of Rosalia Rothansl and Mileva Stoisavljevic-Roller.
The careers of Rosalia Rothansl (1870–1945) and Mileva Stoisavljevic-Roller (1886–1949) are examples
of both the professionalization of women artists in the context of the admission of women to what was then called the Vienna
School of Arts and Crafts, as well as of the modernist orientation of its artistic pedagogy in the early 20th century. As
one of the first women in Central Europe ever to receive a professorship, Rothansl taught artists such as Friedl Dicker-Brandeis,
Elisabeth Karlinsky, Vally Wieselthier, and Emmy Zweybrück in the field of textile techniques. Stoisavljevic trained as a
graphic designer and enamel artist at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and was active early on in the Secession milieu,
contributing to the journals Die Fläche (The Surface) and Ver Sacrum.
The exhibition contextualizes the work of
these two protagonists for the first time on the basis of their textile collections, which have been preserved at the Collection
and Archive of the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the form of two omnibus volumes. These feature multicolored, hand-crafted
pieces of woven, knit, embroidered, and lace clothing and fragments in regionally specific patterns, originating from anonymous
creators in the rural regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Dalmatia, Galicia, Lodomeria, and Bukovina, but also South and East Asia.
Textile Transfers traces the roles the items in the collection played in the construction of national identity
and the transformation of gender relations in the context of the reform of arts and crafts around 1900. The eclectic composition
of the textile collections raises questions as to the existence of a primitivism peculiar to Viennese Modernism, in light
of its appropriation of artistic knowledge practices from regions that appear to belong to the “peripheries” of Austro-Hungary
or the “Orient.”
Textile Transfers.
The Collections of Rosalia Rothansl and Mileva Stoisavljevic-RollerAn exhibition by Collection and Archive,
University of Applied Arts ViennaUniversity Gallery Heiligenkreuzerhof
Duration: 2 May – 15 July 2025
Opening hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 14:00-18:00
Closed on public holidays
