Leopold Museum honors photographic pioneer Madame D’Ora
17.07.2018
First comprehensive exhibition on the oeuvre of Dora Kallmus for 35 years
Vienna (OTS) – With the exhibition “Make Me Beautiful, Madame d’Ora!” the Leopold Museum is presenting the first comprehensive retrospective in Austria on the oeuvre of the extraordinary pioneer of photography Dora Kallmus. More than 330 photographs from all the periods of her work illustrate the artistic range of the oeuvre of “Madame d’Ora” created over some 50 years.
Monika Faber, the exhibition’s curator: “D’Ora’s oeuvre traces a unique arc from the representation of the last Austrian monarch, via the glamour of the Paris fashion world in the 1920s and 30s, to a Europe entirely changed after the War.”
Sought-after portraitist and fashion photographer in Vienna and Paris. Celebrating the opening of the exhibition "Make Me Beautiful, Madame d'Ora!" at the Leopold Museum
The photographic oeuvre of Madame d’Ora spans the period from 1907 to 1957. In 1907 Dora Kallmus (1881-1963) was one of the first women in Vienna to open a photographic studio. Within only a few months, the Atelier d’Ora had established itself as the best studio for artistic portraits in the Imperial city. In Paris, Madame d’Ora celebrated her international breakthrough in the 1920s. In her studios in Vienna, Karlsbad and Paris she captured the luminaries of art and fashion, of the aristocracy and of politics of the 20th century on camera.
Artists and the aristocracy at the Atelier d’Ora: from Gustav Klimt to Josephine Baker
The Atelier d’Ora was frequented by artists and members of the aristocracy alike. In Vienna, she photographed Gustav Klimt, Emilie Flöge, Alma Mahler, Arthur Schnitzler, Alban Berg and Archduke Charles – who would go on to become the last Austrian monarch Emperor Charles I – with his wife Zita. D’Ora also captured the high nobility in 1917 in their splendid robes on the occasion of the coronation of Charles as King of Hungary. In Paris she immortalized the luminaries of the world of fashion, from Lanvin and Coco Chanel to Balenciaga, as well as the celebrities of the time, including Tamara de Lempicka, Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker.
Paris as the center of her life: from Balenciaga to Chanel – d’Ora as a fashion photographer
Her photographs, which captivate with their elegance and flamboyance, were widely disseminated through numerous Austrian and international newspapers. In 1923 d’Ora accepted an offer from the French fashion magazine L’Officiel de la Couture and moved to Paris which from 1925 would become the center of her personal and professional life. She received countless commissions from fashion and lifestyle magazines, which only started to abate from the mid-1930s when the political situation across Europe became increasingly precarious.
Escaping German soldiers
When Nazi troops marched into Paris in 1940, Madame d’Ora sold her studio. Escaping the German occupying forces, she sought refuge in a mountain village south of Lyon. Prior to World War II, d’Ora had regularly visited her sister Anna Kallmus in the summer months at her house in the Styrian town of Frohnleiten. Following the annexation of Austria, the sisters devised plans to flee together, which failed, however. While Dora Kallmus managed to escape, her sister was murdered in a National Socialist concentration camp in occupied Poland. In 1945 d’Ora returned to Paris. Having narrowly escaped death, she focused her at once sharp and emphatic gaze after the War on refugee camps in Vienna and Salzburg and on the meat stock of the Parisian abbatoirs. She continued to create photographic portraits into the 1950s, capturing Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and William Somerset Maugham. Dora Kallmus died in 1963 in Frohnleiten.
The exhibition’s curator Magdalena Vukovic on Madame d’Ora’s slaughterhouse pictures: “We are […] included in the act of killing. The open eyes of the animals […] make these photographs uncanny. […] She repeatedly compels us to look at them and makes us imaginary participants in the act of killing.”
Photographic emphasis at the Leopold Museum: role model d’Ora and Secession photographer Nähr
The Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger has launched a photographic emphasis with the opening of this exhibition, which will continue with the presentation “Moriz Nähr. Photographer of Viennese Modernism” (from 24th August). With Monika Faber and Magdalena Vukovic of the renowned Photoinstitut Bonartes he managed to secure two established d’Ora experts as curators for the Madame d’Ora exhibition.
Hans-Peter Wipplinger: “The brand d’Ora resembles the embodiment of modern photographic technique, skillful marketing and artistic innovative power. Owing to her bourgeois, Jewish Viennese roots, her charm, humor and powers of self-assertion, Dora Kallmus not only became an international luminary of the photography scene as Madame d’Ora but also a feminist role model. This eminent exhibition at the Leopold Museum illustrates an important chapter of Austrian history that is both glamorous and painful.”
About the exhibition
In the elaborate exhibition conceived by Walter Kirpicsenko, d’Ora’s unique photographs are complemented with original dresses and hats, for instance from Vienna’s most sophisticated couture house Zwieback, the Wiener Werkstätte and the Salon Flöge, to paint a picture of Viennese society at the end of the Jugendstil era. French, German, Austrian and Italian original magazines with cover designs, illustrations and texts written by d’Ora supplement the original photographs which hail primarily from the collections of international press agencies (Ullstein, Berlin; Schostal, Vienna), as well as from private collections.
Cooperation with the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and the Photoinstitut Bonartes
The exhibition “Make Me Beautiful, Madame d’Ora!”, which will be shown from 13th July to 29th October at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, was developed in cooperation with the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg as well as the Photoinstitut Bonartes in Vienna.
The book accompanying the exhibition
The book accompanying the exhibition “Make Me Beautiful, Madame d’Ora. Dora Kallmus. Photographer in Vienna and Paris 1907-1957” was published with Christian Brandstätter publishers, Vienna, and edited by Monika Faber, Esther Ruelfs and Magdalena Vukovic, with essays by Andrea Amort, Christian Brandstätter, Jean Marc Dreyfus, Monika Faber, Cathrin Hauswald, Sylvie Lécaliier, Esther Ruelfs, Peter Schreiner, Änne Söll, Katharina Sykora and Magdalena Vukovic.
Opening ceremony
The ceremonial opening of the exhibition on Thursday evening was attended by hundreds of guests, among them the exhibition’s curators Monika Faber and Magdalena Vukovic, Ksenija Škrilec (ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia), Esther Ruelfs (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg), Danielle Spera, director of the Jewish Museum Vienna, MAK CEO Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Gabriele Langer, the Managing Director of the Leopold Museum, the president of the Vienna Secession Herwig Kempinger, Otto Hochreiter (director of GrazMuseum), Peter Weinhäupl (director of the Klimt Foundation) and Sandra Tretter (deputy director of the Klimt Foundation), Sylvia Mattl-Wurm, director of the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, the curators Elisabeth Dutz (Albertina), Susanne Neuburger (mumok), Markus Kristan (Albertina) and Franz Smola (Belvedere), the art historians Marian Bisanz-Prakken, Prof. Patrick Werkner and Prof. Tobias G. Natter (Natter Fine Arts), Verena Traeger (Heidi Horten Collection), the MAK custodians Elisabeth Schmuttermeier and Rainald Franz, Claudia Ehgartner (mumok), Gabriele Mauthe and Christian Maryška (Austrian National Library), Judith Burger and Martin Zeiller (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Andreas Nierhaus (curator at the Wien Museum), Regina Karner (fashion collection of the Wien Museum), Sandra Gerstl and Daniela Sailer (Kaiserliche Wagenburg Wien), department director Gudrun Schreiber (Office of the Federal Chancellor), Anita Zemlyak (City of Vienna, MA 7-culture department), Michael P. Franz, Brigitte Burgmann-Guldner (KulturKontakt Austria), Heidrun and Raphael Rosenberg (University of Vienna, Department of Art History) and Wolfgang Paul (Mauthausen Memorial).
The opening at the Leopold Museum was further attended by the artists Andreas Fogarasi, Markus Schinwald and Walter Vopava, the photographer Elfie Semotan, the choreographer Willi Dorner, the collector Waltraud Leopold, collector and publisher Christian Brandstätter, as well as the gallery owner and collector Julius Hummel.
Also present were Claudia Daeubner (Success & Career Consulting Int.), Sherrie Doyon de Toma (Executive Director UBS Europe) and Peter de Toma, Alfred Fogarassy (Telos Consulting), Fritz Otti (EMConsulting) and Jack C. Wagner (Q1 Capital).
Other notable attendees at the opening included the Klimt descendants Gustav and Brigitta Huber as well as Brigitte Huber-Mader, Brigitte von Aufschnaiter Müller Hartburg, Elisabeth Auersperg-Breunner, Yolande Dreihann-Holenia, Andreas Orsini Rosenberg, Silvia Eisenburger Kunz (Gesellschaft der Freunde der bildenden Künste) and surgeon Arthur Bohdjalian.
Madame d’Ora’s photographs were also admired by the CEOs of im Kinsky Ernst Ploil and Michael Kovacek, the founder of Parnass Charlotte Kreuzmayr, the gallery owners Dagmar Chobot, Nathalie Halgand, Michaela Hitzenberger, Andrea Jünger, Agnes Mayrhofer (bel etage), Johannes Faber, Franz Groiß (Nebehay), Martin Janda and Faek Rasul (Kleine Galerie).
Also spotted at the opening celebrations were the Dorotheum expert Ursula Rohringer, the photography expert Felix Leutner, the filmmaker Georg Riha, advertiser Christian Satek, and many more.
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