YVES MACAUX

YVES MACAUX
Secessions decorative arts
Carl Otto Czeschka
"Waldidyll" Fabric
For Gustav Klimt
1910-11
Executed by the Wiener Werkstaette
H. 21,5 x W. 36,2 cm
Christian Witt-Doerring, curator at the Neue Galerie, NY, writes:
Since around 1910, the Wiener Werkstätte had begun selling textiles, commissioning various firms to make them.
Over the years this developed into one of their most profitable product lines and met with wide international
recognition: thus the Paris fashion designer would regularly buy their fabrics for his own haute couture creations.
The Wiener Werkstätte's investment in textile production coincided with the opening of their fashion department and
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YVES MACAUX
Secessions decorative arts
was the next logical step along their path of redesigning all aspects of people's everyday life. Textile furnishings
played a key role in realising their concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk – the total work of art.
Besides the leading designers of the Wiener Werkstätte, including Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, Dagobert
Peche and Eduard Josef Wimmer-Wisgrill, Gustav Klimt, too, applied himself to questions of fashion. Whether on
account of his long-term relationship with the fashion designer Emilie Flöge, whose fashion salon was designed by
the Wiener Werkstätte, or indeed his fundamental interest in ornamental expression, in 1906 he is supposed to
have designed a number of dresses for her. Klimt's own painting smock documented in various forms shows in
each case differently embroidered ornamental shoulder trimmings, most likely based on his design. The banker
family and financiers of the Wiener Werkstätte Mäda and Otto Primavesi threw a fancy dress party in Winkelsdorf,
the country villa Josef Hoffmann had designed for them, where, in 1916, Gustav Klimt wore a caftan-type robe made
of Czeschka's fabric "Waldidyll" – Woodland Idyll – (1910/11). There is nothing coincidental about Klimt being in the
Primavesi house and draped in a WW fabric. After all, it was Klimt who in 1912/13, when commissioned to paint
the portrait of Mäda Primavesis and her daughter, established the contact with Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener
Werkstätte, with the aim of invigorating the tottering financial resources of the WW. It succeeded in winning Klimt as
a member of the management board as early as 1913. The Werkstätte saw a potential saviour in Otto Primavesi,
the financially potent Olmütz (now Olomouc) banker who in 1915 finally became its CEO. Spurred on by his wife and
at the same time aware of the social advancement offered by a leading share in WW business affairs, in 1914 he
became a WW shareholder with a capital contribution of 50,000 crowns. The artistic contact between Josef
Hoffmann and Gustav Klimt had been close since their time as founding members of the Secession. His clients
were also Gustav Klimt's. For instance, in 1901/02 Klimt painted Marie Henneberg, for whom Hoffmann had built
and furnished a villa on the Hohe Warte in Vienna. Hermine Gallia was portrayed by Klimt in 1903/04, Hoffmann
designed the interior of her Vienna apartment in 1913. Klimt painted Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein in 1905
and in the same year Hoffmann designed her Berlin apartment. The portrait's frame was Hoffmann's design and
executed by the Wiener Werkstätte.
Carl Otto Czeschka (1878-1960) studied painting at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. From 1902 to 1907, he
taught at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Decorative Arts), after which he moved on to become
professor at the Hamburg Kunstgewerbeschule until 1943. Since 1905, he still remained an associate of the
Wiener Werkstätte also during the Hamburg period, supplying designs primarily in the sectors of graphics,
jewellery, fabrics and metal.
Ref.: Angela Völker; Die Stoffe der Wiener Werkstätte 1910-1932; Vienna 1990, p. 56f.
Angela Völker; Textiles of the Wiener Werkstätte, 1910-1932, New York, 1994, p. 56f..
43, rue de la Régence - 1000 Bruxelles - Tél +32 2 502 31 16 - Fax +32 67 790 150
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