Mosaic Calla

Leopold Forstner occupies a very special place in Viennese art around 1900. Trained as a painter and graphic artist at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, he already impressed others as a young graduate with fully completed posters, making him stand out as a master of this art form in Vienna on a level equal to his teacher Koloman Moser. His achievements as a graphic artist in the early years of the 20th century ranged from large-format posters and witty book illustrations to surface patterns and ex libris designs thought through down to the smallest detail. His enduring place in Austrian art history, however, was to be found in an art medium that was revived for Viennese modernism, the surface mosaic. Forstner thus linked up with a technique rooted in ancient art, which he realigned to the requirements of modern architecture. He created mosaic pictures from the most varied materials – stone, glass in the most diverse surface forms, ceramics, enamel, copper – which he embedded in cement mortar. In their materiality these mosaic pictures unfolded a monumental effect visually, which was useable in all formats and played a role in modern architectural design that previously had been the preserve of mural painting. In contrast to murals, the mosaic exhibited key advantages in terms of durability, however. The wealth of materials employed in Forstner’s mosaics made of stone, glass, metal, burnt and glazed clay enabled decorative variations of the most diverse kinds, with inexhaustible ornamentation that was barely subject to any kind of visual aging process. Thus, Arthur Roessler summed up as early as 1911: ‘It is not the fresco which alone has some duration in southern climates, to which the future belongs, rather the mosaic.’