Broncia Koller-Pinell: An Artist Lost to Time

Broncia Koller-Pinell: Forgotten Woman of Art History

With many female artists throughout history, it is highly probable for their life and works to get left behind after their death. This could be due to their gender, religion, or socioeconomic status. Over the past years, however, these otherwise forgotten artists have been getting recognition. Their gender, often combined with their religion, made it easy to see how moments throughout history have all but wiped them from the narrative. One such woman is the Austrian artist Broncia Koller-Pinell.

A Story Buried by History and Time

While researching Koller-Pinell, one thing that stood out was the lack of information to be found: there are very few sources about her, therefore forming an all-encompassing story of this particular artist is challenging. One of the main takeaways is that her life’s story may have been buried by the rest of history due to her gender and Jewish heritage.

Broncia Koller-Pinell

Born as Bronislawa Pineles, Broncia (1863-1934) moved with her upper-middle-class family to Vienna from her birthplace of Sanok (today’s Poland) when they changed their surname to Pinell. Her family’s economic status allowed her to gain training in a field that was not entirely open to women at the time.

Life and Work

After relocating to Vienna, the young Broncia began studying under sculptor Josef Raab and later under the painter Alois Delug. She quickly became popular among renowned artist circles in Europe. Female artists were not allowed into the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna until after 1920, but this did not stop her from being ultimately accepted into the Vienna Secession, and the overall Viennese artistic scene.

Faith and Life

Broncia Koller-Pinell grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Going against her family’s wishes, she married a Catholic physician and physicist Hugo Koller. The pair would go on to have two children who they raised in the Catholic faith. Koller-Pinell stayed true to her own Jewish beliefs throughout her life and marriage. She passed away in 1934, roughly four years before the Nazis would come to power in Austria. Because the Nazis saw art made by Jewish artists (among others) as degenerate, it is highly likely that her work was forgotten after the takeover in 1938.

Successes of Broncia Koller-Pinell

Despite her talent, the artist was known in some circles as merely being the talented wife of a prominent physician. But she was much more than that, especially in the artistic circles of Vienna. Beyond, she worked within the same as more well-known male artists such as Gustav Klimt and Heinrich Schröder. Her work was inspired by some Expressionist artists, but also Impressionist artists of late 19th-century Europe. Overall, Koller-Pinell practiced her own form of art. And while her works have clear ties to the Expressionist movement, her oeuvre cannot be pinned to just that style. In her article, A Forgotten Fame, Katharina Cichosh states:

Now

In a 2019 exhibition at Vienna’s Belvedere Museum, Koller-Pinell’s artworks were part of an exhibition aptly titled City of Women, and focused on the forgotten art of earlier female artists in Vienna and Europe in general. The exhibition’s curator, Sabine Fellner, stated: