Kurt Moldovan

1918 Vienna - 1977 Vienna

Kurt Moldovan was born in Vienna on June 22, 1918. He gave up the profession of precision engineer in 1938 in favour of his artistic interests and began studying commercial art and illustrations at the Vienna School of Applied Arts, now the University of Applied Arts. After five years as a soldier on the Eastern Front, from 1940 to 1945, in which he also drew and wrote poems, he enrolled in Sergius Pauser's master class at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and attended the class on evening nude with Herbert Boeckl in 1945.

As a founding member of the Austrian section of the Art Club, Moldovan regularly took part in its international exhibitions from 1947 onwards. In 1949 he received the award of the Society for the Advancement of Modern Art. First purchases of his work were made by the Albertina and Monsignor Otto Mauer. By participating in the Venice Biennale in 1950, his work was recognized by the highest authorities. This was followed by participation in the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1954 and in the exhibition of the Austria Pavilion at the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958. In the same year, Moldovan was awarded the Prize of the City of Vienna, and in 1968 he received the Grand Austrian State Prize. He was admitted to the Austrian Art Senate in 1970.

Throughout his life, Moldovan undertook study trips across Europe and in 1967 also to Mexico and the USA, where he stayed in New York for several months.

His oeuvre consists of prints, drawings and watercolours. The content was always determined by the politically and mythologically multi-faceted Theatrum mundi, which "since Georg Grosz nobody has ever explored in such detail as he did." City vedutes and landscapes occupy a special place in that they primarily focus on the description of the ambience or the stage of this world theater. Kurt Moldovan died in Vienna on September 16, 1977.