Carl Moll

_{Vienna 1861 - 1945 Vienna}

Carl Moll was born in Vienna in 1861. From 1880 to 1881, he studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste (Acadamy of Fine Arts in Vienna) under Christian Griepenkerl, but it was Emil Jakob Schindler who would then become his actual teacher. As his private student, he accompanied Schindler during many journeys from 1881 until his teacher’s death in 1892. In 1895, Moll married his teacher’s widow and became Alma Mahler-Werfel’s stepfather as well as Gustav Mahler’s father in law. Carl Moll was one of the most outstanding figures in the Viennese art scene around and after 1900. From 1894 on, he was a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus. In 1897, he co-founded the Vienna Secession, which he left in 1905, together with the so called “Klimt group“. As artistic director of Miethke gallery, he organized numerous pioneering exhibitions including Austrian and international artists like Waldmüller, Romako, Van Gogh and Cézanne. Carl Moll started off by taking up on the Austrian tradition of a more atmosphere-impressionistic landscape painting, then developed into balanced compositions of the seccesionist interior and ended with expressive, light-filled premises and wide, pastose colouration. Moll’s paintings are amongst the most famous examples of Austrian art and are located in important museums and private collections. Carl Moll committed suicide after the invasion of Russian troops in 1945.