Education
Erika Giovanna Klien began her studies at the Vienna School of Applied Arts, also known as Wien Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, Austria in 1919 and graduated in 1925.
Erika Giovanna Klien began her studies at the Vienna School of Applied Arts, also known as Wien Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, Austria in 1919 and graduated in 1925.
She was a student of Doctor Franz Cizek and became one of his teaching assistants at his Juvenile Art Class. In Cizek"s course, Theory of Ornamental Form, Klien was introduced to a new style known as Viennese Kinetism. Kinetism emphasized movement and modern vitality, in a way similar to French Cubism, Italian Futurism and Russian Constructivism.
She developed the technique and theories of Kinetism throughout her artistic life and became its leading exponent.
Cizek included her in several international exhibitions, including the Paris Decorative Arts Exhibition of 1925 and the International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York City in 1927. After graduation, Klien found it difficult, as did many women, to earn a living as an independent artist.
She worked as a commercial graphic artist and taught at the Elizabeth Duncan School, at Klessheim near Salzburg, from 1926 to 1928. She exhibited her work at the Fourth International Congress of Art Education in Prague in 1928.
In 1929 Klien sailed for the United States, bringing with her hopes for an artistic career and the reform theories of children"s art education she had acquired in Vienna.
She worked at New York’s Stuyvesant High School, Spence School, Dalton School and the Walt Whitman School, among others 1930: The New School for Social Research, New York
1975: Galerie Pabst, Vienna
1986: Retrospective at Gallery Pabst, Munich
1987: Museum des XX. Jahrhunderts (Museum of the 20th Century), Vienna (250 works)
1989: Rachel Adler Gallery, New York
2001: Bolzano
2006: Société Anonyme at the Hammer, reviewed in The Aesthetic
Permanently: Phillips Collection Art Museum in Washington, District of Columbia.