When Michael Powolny and Bertold Löffler founded Wiener Keramik in 1906, they viewed ceramics as an artistic medium on a par with painting and sculpture – and as the vehicle for a modern idea: art should permeate everyday life without submitting to it. Working closely with the Wiener Werkstätte, they developed an expressive, colour-rich design language that quickly gained international recognition.
With the merger of Wiener Keramik and Gmundner Keramik to form “Vereinigte Wiener und Gmundner Keramik” in 1912, this ethos was brought to the Salzkammergut. Gmunden developed into a production centre and, at the same time, the spiritual continuation of that artistic ambition which combined craftsmanship, design and social aspirations. Names such as Dagobert Peche, Franz von Zülow, Emilie Schleiss-Simandl and Gudrun Wittke-Baudisch epitomise this movement.
Today, the tradition of ceramic art is continued by the Academy of Ceramics Gmunden (AoCG) in collaboration with international artists. Works of particularly high artistic quality created here are permitted to bear the Vienna Ceramics label – as a mark of craftsmanship, conceptual depth and contemporary relevance.
The current, strictly limited artist editions demonstrate just how versatile these works of art are.
ROSI STEINBACH
Rosi Steinbach creates vases that appear like organic beings. Their forms are reminiscent of tree stumps, rock formations or overgrown surfaces, whilst also evoking the region’s ‘flamed’ ceramics and tiled stoves. The lids of her vases seem to grow out of the vessel itself and can be interpreted as small sculptures in their own right. Steinbach combines regional memory with sculptural thinking. Here, ceramics become a landscape in miniature. The “Traunstein vases” draw on a regional kiln-firing tradition and combine classic craft techniques with sculptural innovation.
Limited to 10 pieces.
MARIA KULIKOVSKA
In Maria Kulikovska’s work, ceramics become a political body. Plates, bowls and reliefs serve not as objects of representation, but as statements of accusation. Her works address war, violence and female physicality, drawing on personal experiences of exile and loss. The traditionally domestic medium of ceramics thus becomes a site of radical visibility – vulnerable and impossible to overlook at the same time.
Each ashtray in this series features a unique design. Limited to 30 pieces.
PETER BALDINGER
Peter Baldinger, who grew up in the Salzkammergut region himself, reflects in his sculpture ‘Gegenreformation’ on historical religious wars and their distressing relevance today. The form of a modern rocket, crowned by a church tiara, combines religious symbolism with contemporary violence. The fact that this image of power is crafted from ceramic heightens the tension between ideological rigour and material fragility. The sculpture “Counter-Reformation” combines the form of a modern rocket with the symbol of a tiara, thereby linking historical and contemporary images of power.
Limited to 10 pieces.
JULIA BELIAEVA
Ukrainian artist Julia Beliaeva brings the Viennese ceramic tradition into a digitally shaped present. Her white figures and ceramic structures emerge from the interplay of 3D technologies and craftsmanship. War, flight and fragility are central themes: ceramics become a repository of memory and trauma, but also of resilience. The series “Sadness • Siren • Hope” draws on the tradition of porcelain children’s figurines and translates it into a harrowing present: a boy as a symbol of enduring oppression, a girl who lost her legs in the war and becomes a siren, and the portrait of the son as a bearer of hope.
Limited to 10 pieces each.
KIM SIMONSSON
Finally, with Kim Simonsson, the fairy-tale and the mythical make their entrance. His figurative works combine pop culture, natural motifs and a deliberately renewed figuration. Known for his velvety-green ‘Moss People’, Simonsson epitomises a generation that has liberated ceramics from its niche as a craft and brought it back into the international art discourse. The “Wolfgirl with Luru” series, available in two different versions in white and green, combines figurative traditions with pop culture, fairy-tale motifs and innovative surfaces.
Limited to 10 pieces each.
What unites these approaches is not style or theme, but an attitude: ceramics is understood as a serious artistic medium that carries history and, at the same time, engages with the present. Viennese ceramics thus present themselves as an open system – rooted in craftsmanship, shaped by historical responsibility and ready to engage with contemporary issues. In this way, Gmundner Keramik continues a tradition stretching back over a century, without preserving it. Ceramics once again become what they have always been here: a mirror of their time – shaped from clay, history and attitude.
