Carl Moll - Buy or sell works
23 April 1861, Vienna (Austria) - 13 April 1945, Vienna (Austria)
Carl Moll studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He was a member of the cooperative of visual artists, a co-founder of the Vienna Secession and a member of the German Künstlerbund as well as artistic director of Galerie Miethke.
From 1882 Carl Moll was part of the circle of students around Emil Jakob Schindler, for whom he worked as assistant. After Schindler's death in 1892, in 1895, he married his widow Anna and became stepfather of her daughters - Alma, later Alma Mahler-Werfel, and her half-sister Grete.
Moll's style was initially influenced by Stimmungsimpressionismus (English: 'Impressionism of the mood'), and the rendering of light and shadows played a significant role in his works. Moll was close friends with Josef Maria Olbrich, Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann – relationships that all influenced his artistic output, which became heavily associated with Symbolism and Art Nouveau painting in Vienna around Gustav Klimt. Through his many contacts, he promoted groundbreaking exhibitions of international modernism, French Impressionism, and Belgian Symbolism at the Vienna Secession. In 1905, together with Gustav Klimt, he left the Secession and, as head of Galerie Miethke, dedicated numerous exhibitions to Klimt and his friends. He participated in the 1908 Kunstschau and the International Kunstschau of 1909. Galerie Miethke showed his work together with Max Kurzweil in 1911.
His scenes of interiors in his villa at the Hohe Warte in Vienna reflect the sophisticated atmosphere of the Wiener Moderne of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser. In 1937, on occasion of Oskar Kokoschka's 50th birthday, he also organised an exhibition, which is remarkable considering that Germany's National Socialists had declared Kokoschka's art 'degenerate'.
Moll undertook numerous study trips during his life, among others, to Italy, France and Spain. As a patron of the arts, he supported the establishment of the Modern Gallery (now the Belvedere Museum) in Vienna. He was also active as a writer and wrote a biography of Emil Jakob Schindler (1930). Moll committed suicide in April 1945 at the age of 84.
Unanswered questions about the life and work of Carl Moll should find answers in a catalogue raisonné, currently under preparation by Cornelia Cabuk as part of the Belvedere Catalogue Raisonné series financed by Dorotheum.