Modernist Artist. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

A veritable eye-opener. Never before has there been a solo exhibition in Switzerland dedicated to the work of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898–1944). Even elsewhere in Europe, her work has only come to wider attention again since the 1990s. Like so many of her generation, she was sidelined for decades in the history of European modernist art. This is due to the fact that her architectonic work was destroyed and she herself, as a left-wing Jewish artist, was persecuted and ultimately murdered. For the very first time in Switzerland, the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich now pays homage to this important Austrian artist.

The sheer breadth of media and genres that Dicker-Brandeis addresses, right across the spectrum of fine and applied arts, is impressive. Influenced by her studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, at Johannes Itten’s private art school in the same city and at the Bauhaus in Dessau, she worked as a painter, printer, set designer, architect and designer in Vienna and Berlin, both in exile and as a deportee. Her work reflects her interests in reform, her affinity with music, image and writing, and her outstandingly innovative crossovers between various aspects of form within different media. Starting with a large selection of her work and documentary material from the collection of the University of Applied Arts, Vienna – which holds an unparalleled number of examples and which showed the first part of the exhibition in the autumn of 2022 – oeuvre of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis can at last be rediscovered.

A lavishly illustrated exhibition catalogue will be published in German and English.

With the kind support of the Federal Ministry Republic of Austria - Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport, Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim Stiftung, the Omanut Forum für jüdische Kunst und Kultur, the Österreichisches Kulturforum Bern, and our anonyomous sponsors.