TILLA DURIEUX.
A WITNESS TO A CENTURY AND HER ROLES

Editors: Daniela Gregori, Hans-Peter Wipplinger
Authors: Stephan Dörschel, Daniela Gregori, Hannah Reisinger, Aline Marion Steinwender, Prolog von Hans-Peter Wipplinger

The Leopold Museum is dedicating the first comprehensive exhibition to the celebrated star of the theater and film Tilla Durieux (1880-1971). Durieux was a modern woman of the 1920s who was politically active and whose roles were as varied as the list of artists who portrayed her. Among them were Auguste Renoir, Lovis Corinth, Franz von Stuck, Max Slevogt, August Gaul, Emil Orlik, Ernst Barlach, Olaf Gulbransson, Max Oppenheimer, Oskar Kokoschka and Charley Toorop, as well as the photographers Frieda Riess, Sasha Stone, Lotte Jacobi and Mary Duras. The presentation Tilla Durieux. A Witness to a Century and Her Roles explores the fascination the Vienna-born and Berlin-based actress held already for her contemporaries.

“Aside from the personality of Tilla Durieux, her changeful biography, her social and political commitment and her exemplariness as a modern woman of the 1920s, there is also an important art historical aspect to this presentation: Rarely has any one person been portrayed as frequently and in so many different media over a period of around 70 years. Based on the depictions of Tilla Durieux, we might tell the story of Modernist portraiture.”

Daniela Gregori, curator of the exhibition