Carl Moser (1871 - 1939)

Carl Moser grew up in Bolzano in a family of tanners that included several self-taught artists. After commercial training, he returned to his first love, painting, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

At the end of this training, he travels to Germany, Corsica, Italy and France, where he settles in 1901. There he attended the Julian Academy. In Paris, he discovered Japanese painting and engraving.

Carl Moser spent his summers in Brittany (Douarnenez and Concarneau) where he met Max Kurzweil who encouraged him to try his hand at color woodcutting. He became friends with Henri Rivière. Carl Moser achieves a remarkable synthesis between Japanese and European art.

He returned home to Bolzano in 1907 and exhibited his prints in Germany and Austria. The Albertina Museum in Vienna bought a large number of his prints. The First World War caused the South Tyrolean to change his nationality from Austrian to Italian. Moser now exhibited in his adopted country in various galleries in Rome, Turin and Milan and at the Venice Biennale.

Carl Moser died at the end of the 1930s in poverty and forgotten. His graphic work was rediscovered in the 1970s, notably with the Innsbruck exhibition in 1978.