A WOMAN CALLED TINA – The first painter Post / Impressionist art history

TINA BLAU 1/3 – “If you really want to become an artist, you have to learn to surmount problems”. This is what Simon Blau wrote to his sixteen-year-old daughter, who was on a study trip in Transylvania. She owed her successful career partly to her father, who lived out his own artistic dreams through his daughter, providing all the support necessary for the young student, to pursue her auspicious artistic talent, supporting her financially, providing her teachers and encouraging her.

TINA BLAU 2/3 – She (born in Vienna in 1845), not only overcame many obstacles, but was the only Jewish woman artist professionally recognized in her generation – first painter of Post/ Impressionist art history. She made her artistic debut at the Österreichischen Kunstverein. In 1873 her paintings were already being shown at the Viennese World Exhibition. Blau’s larger and more finished paintings from her early career (such as View of the Arch of Titus Vespasian and Surrounding Ruins in the Roman Forum) are impressively loose and gestural.

TINA BLAU 3/3 – She has always been associated with the landscape painter Emil Jakob and contemporary critics mistakenly describe their relationship as that of teacher and student. She painted aesthetically innovative works (like the 1883 In the Tuileries Gardens), in which she allows the paint to hover over the canvas. She spent her last summer working in Bad Gastein, then went to a sanatorium in Vienna for a medical examination. She died there of cardiac arrest.