Teresa Feoderovna Ries

Teresa Ries was born in Russia to a Jewish family. She attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. She was expelled for showing disrespect toward a professor in one of her classes.[2][3] She moved to Vienna at the age of 21, where her first exhibition at the Vienna Künstlerhaus included Witch, a sculpture of a nude woman clipping her toenails.[4] This piece caught the attention of Kaiser Franz Joseph I,[3] and she soon became highly celebrated throughout Vienna.[4] The exhibition was also attended by Gustav Klimt, an active member of the Vienna Secession movement, who asked her to exhibit with them.[3] She sought out Edmund Hellmer as a mentor; at first he refused, saying that "it was pointless to teach women since they married anyway".[1] Hellmer eventually relented and helped her to exhibit her work and to gain commissions.[1]

In 1900 Ries exhibited at the Paris World's Fair and the 1911 World's Fair in Turin on the invitation of both Russia and Austria.[3] Prince Aloys of Liechtenstein offered her the use of a suite of rooms beside his own picture gallery as a studio.[3]

Working in stone, marble, plaster, and bronze,[5] Ries produced both private and public works during her career. Some of her well-known nude sculptures are Sleepwaker (pre-1894),[6] Lucifer (c. 1897),[7] and Death (1898).[8] She produced sculptures and busts for public spaces; her Bust of Jaromir Mundy (1897) is mounted on the outside of the Vienna Fireman's Association building.[9] She is perhaps best known for photographing and creating a bust of Mark Twain during the time he resided in Vienna.[10][11][12]

According to art critic Karl Kraus, "her exhibitions received too much publicity".[3] Ries published her memoir, Die Sprache des Steines (The Language of Stone) in 1928.[13] In 1938 she was evicted from her gallery and studio space due to the Nazi policy of Aryanization. She continued to work in Vienna until 1942[3] and then immigrated to Lugano, Switzerland.[5][12]

Ries married, lost a child, and divorced while still a teenager in Moscow.[2]

Her work was included in the 2019 exhibition City Of Women: Female artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938 at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.[14]

• Johnson, Julie M. (2012). The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna 1900. Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-613-6.
• Anka Leśniak: Teresa Feodorowna Ries and The Witch. Art and Documentation, 21, 2019, pp. 143–158