Heinrich Lefler

Original pencil and watercolor drawing for an Opera production, signed with initials at lower left. Measures 11 x 8-1/8 inches.

Lefler and Joseph Urban also created sets and costume designs for operas aside from their collaboration in designing books, interiors, murals and furniture

Heinrich Lefler (1863–1919) worked primarily in Vienna as a member of the Künstlerhaus (1891) and by late 1890s he became among one of Austria’s first artists to design posters, then an emerging and highly popular medium. Together with Joseph Urban, he designed costumes, interiors (including murals – the town hall in Vienna among them), furniture and accessories. In 1900 they co-founded the Hagenbund, an artists’ cooperative that exhibited works by a number of important figures including Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. From 1903-1910 Lefler taught at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. This image is considered amongst the most beautiful designs in his oeuvre, where Urban did the enhanced ornamental borders in the published books.