NORBERTINE BRESSLERN-ROTH (1891 - 1978)

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Norbertine Bresslern-Roth was an important, award-winning Austrian painter and printmaker. She studied with Professor Ferdinand Schmutzer at the Vienna Art Academy .After a successful exhibition in the Vienna Secession in 1916, she returned to Graz to settle down as a freelance artist. She was one of the first women to work intensively on the novel printing technique of linocut. From 1921 to 1952 she created numerous animal representations in this technique. In 1928, Bresslern-Roth undertook a trip to North Africa , which led her to numerous animal depictions, and later she got more ideas visiting European Zoos . She also illustrated children's books and created tapestries and ivory miniatures. In 1951 she became honorary president of the 1946 re-approved Styrian Art Association. During the Nazi era , she created some images that are now classified as critical of the regime. Because of this and because she did not separate from her husband Georg Ritter von Bresslern, whom she married in 1918 and was the "half-Jew" , today she is assigned to the "cultural resistance". Bresslern-Roth is regarded worldwide as the most important animal painter of the present day. Works by Bresslern-Roth are among others owned by the Neue Galerie Graz and the collection of the state capital Graz.