Bertold Loffler
Austrian, 1874-1960
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Bertold (Berthold) Löffler was an Austrian historical and fresco painter as well as a graphic artist and designer.
Bertold Löffler came from a Bohemian clothmaking family. After attending evening classes at the drawing school of the North Bohemian Trade Museum in Reichenberg, Bohemia (1888–1890), he graduated from the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts under Franz Matsch and Koloman Moser. In 1899, Löffler, together with Carl Maria Schwerdtner and Robert Friedländer, published the satirical magazine Quer Sacrum under the pseudonym B. Le-Fleur as a parody of the magazine Ver Sacrum of the Vienna Secession. From 1900 he worked independently, and in 1903 he was appointed assistant to Anton Groll. Together with Michael Powolny, he founded the “Wiener Keramik” workshop in 1905.
In 1907, he took over the “Specialist Class for Painting and the Workshop for Printing Processes” at the Vienna School of Applied Arts, from which a whole generation of modern Austrian graphic artists emerged, including Oskar Kokoschka, Josef von Divéky and Josef Binder. In 1908 Löffler co-founded the “Kunstschau” and the “Österreichischer Werkbund” and in 1909 he was appointed professor as successor to Carl Otto Czeschka, who had been called to Hamburg.
When World War I broke out, Löffler, a first lieutenant in the reserve, was assigned to the southwestern front with three photographers to create nature studies. In 1916, he was appointed head of the central office for image services and on March 23, 1917, he was assigned as a war artist to the art group of the Imperial and Royal (until February 15, 1918). In April 1918, he was a collection officer of the Army Museum at the 10th Army Command in Trento. As a war artist, he designed posters for war exhibitions and war bonds, patriotic picture books and screw medals. Study trips took him to Germany and Italy.
Löffler decorated children's books with lithographs in the style of the Vienna Secession for various Viennese publishers, and he designed postcards, posters and calendars for the Wiener Werkstätte. In the ceramics field, he worked on projects by Josef Hoffmann, for example the Purkersdorf Sanatorium, the Cabaret Fledermaus and the Stoclet House in Brussels. Löffler also designed a series of bookplates, including one for Sigmund Freud (incorrectly spelled Siegmund, by the way, but that did not prevent Freud from using this bookplate). Apart from that, he contributed paintings and graphic works to numerous international exhibitions.
On March 1, 1932, he joined the NSDAP (membership number 899,219).
On the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1954, Löffler received numerous honors, including the “Golden Laurel” award from the Vienna Künstlerhaus. He was buried in the Vienna Central Cemetery.