Image: Exhibition view, Wiener Moderne. Weiblich. Widerständig. © KMK, Photo: Agnes Winkler
The Landesgalerie Niederösterreich in Krems is showing ‘Wiener Moderne. Weiblich. Widerständig’ (Viennese Modernism. Female. Resistant), curated by Sabine Fellner, until 10 January 2027. The exhibition, which opened on 11 April 2026, centres on Fanny Harlfinger-Zakucka (1873–1954) and marks the hundredth anniversary of the Vereinigung Wiener Frauenkunst, the women artists’ association she founded.
Born in Mank in Lower Austria, Harlfinger-Zakucka worked as a painter, printmaker, illustrator and applied artist, and campaigned for equality for women. She took part in the Kunstschau organised by the Klimt group and exhibited with the Neukunstgruppe founded by Egon Schiele. She illustrated the magazines Ver Sacrum, Der liebe Augustin and Die Fläche, worked with the Wiener Werkstätte, and showed her work in Vienna and at the Paris Salon. Her design for a modern children’s room, with lemon-yellow furniture and a red grid pattern, received an honorary prize from the City of Vienna in 1929.
In 1926 a group of women left the VBKÖ, the Association of Women Artists of Austria, to found Wiener Frauenkunst, which the museum describes as progressive and centre-left. In 1930 the group staged the exhibition ‘Wie sieht die Frau?’ (How Does Woman See?) alongside the International Women’s Congress, and in 1931 it took part in ‘Die schaffende Österreicherin’ at the Secession, where portrait photographs of the artists hung beside their work.
The exhibition traces women artists’ struggle for recognition and independence between the wars, under headings devoted to the rediscovery of a universal artist, pioneers in the fight for recognition, the artists of Viennese Modernism and feminist art. Alongside Harlfinger-Zakucka it presents work by Bettina Bauer-Ehrlich, Maria Cyrenius, Helene Funke, Margarete Hamerschlag, Stephanie Hollenstein, Hilda Jesser-Schmid, Broncia Koller, Dina Kuhn, Gabi Lagus-Möschl, Frieda Salvendy, Annie Schröder-Ehrenfest, Marianne Seeland, Susi Singer, Luise Spannring, Maria Strauss-Likarz, Helene Taussig, Hilde Wagner-Ascher, Franziska Zach and Liane Zimbler.
The section on feminist art connects this history to the early 1970s, when the Feministische Avantgarde and IntAkt, the International Action Group of Women Artists, renewed the call for equality.
An accompanying catalogue, subtitled ‘Fanny Harlfinger-Zakucka und die Wiener Frauenkunst’ and edited by Gerda Ridler and Sabine Fellner, has been published by Müry Salzmann.
