Painter and enamelist Lisel Salzer was born August 26, 1906, into a well-to-do Jewish family and grew up in Vienna. She began drawing as a girl and studied art at the Vienna Art Academy, graduating in 1929. Her career took off quickly and she exhibited widely throughout Austria during her 20s, as well as joining an artist colony in Zinkenbach, Austria, in the years leading up to World War II. Salzer moved to New York in 1939 to escape the threat of Nazi Germany and married fellow Austrian Frederick Grossman in 1942. In 1945, while visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she was drawn to the jewel-like beauty and rich colors she saw in a collection of Limoges enamels. Unable to find much information about this sixteenth-century art technique, she taught herself through books and experimentation. In 1950, Salzer and her husband relocated to Seattle, where she continued her career as a portrait artist and enamelist. At the age of 96, she was honored with a solo museum exhibition in Zinkenbach and awarded the Cross of Merit in Gold by the Austrian province of Salzburg. She died in Seattle on December 6, 2005, eight months shy of her 100th birthday.
Early Years
Lisel Salzer, born on August 26, 1906, in Austria, was the only child of a prosperous Jewish couple that included a German-speaking father and a mother born in Turkey. She was artistically gifted, playing piano as a child and later, cello. She took art lessons as a girl, followed by further study at the Vienna Art Academy, graduating in 1929. As a graduation gift, her parents sent her to Paris for three months. There she was inspired by the city’s iconic landmarks, charming side streets, and numerous art galleries. She returned to Vienna and set up her own studio.
During the next decade, her work was exhibited widely in Austria. Two of her paintings were accepted into a top regional juried art show called the Vienna Secession. Soon, she caught the eye of Galerie Wüthle, a gallery in Vienna established in 1865 that represented internationally known artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, and she was invited to exhibit her work there.
Salzer found inspiration outside Vienna as well. "With her parents, Salzer spent summers along the shores of the scenic Wolfgangsee near Salzburg, at St. Wolfgang or St. Gilgen. And it was there in that beautiful resort region that Salzer discovered an artist colony at the tiny village of Zinkenbach. It turned out that her former instructor Ferdinand Kitt was living there year-round, along with many of his friends ... Salzer spent time at Zinkenbach with her friends, living at their homes and painting landscapes and portraits" ("A Find from the 'Lost Generation'"). From 1925-1938, the artist colony at Zinkenbach was home to some well-known Austrian artists. But when Austria was annexed into the German Reich in early 1938, many of the artists’ lives were threatened. "Some, like Salzer, were Jewish; others professed strong political beliefs. Others were considered dangerous by the Nazis simply because of their artwork and the fact that they worked together" ("A Find from the 'Lost Generation'").
Escape to America
Salzer chose to flee the country and arrived in New York in August 1939, just weeks before the start of World War II. In New York, her boyfriend, Frederick Grossman (d. 1957), an Austrian physician and cellist who had fled Europe ahead of her, was waiting and the couple married in 1942. They had no children.
In an interview with The Seattle Times in 2002, Salzer shared the story of her escape from Europe. "You needed a so-called affidavit. It meant that if you came here without any money there was an American citizen who would care for you. I got my affidavit in a very funny way. [Consulting a list of art collectors] I wrote letters saying, 'I’m a painter' and so forth. A man from Philadelphia, a bachelor, gave me an affidavit, Mr. Winthrop ... He was a middle-age, very romantic bachelor, and he thought it would be very romantic to have a young artist from Europe living there. He was very disappointed that I had a boyfriend in New York" ("A Find from the 'Lost Generation'"). Her parents died during World War II in the Theresiendstadt concentration camp.
Salzer and Grossman lived on Third Avenue, close to 60th Street. Although she later referred to those early days as a struggle, she also found life in New York stimulating. The couple was within walking distance of the 57th Street art galleries and close to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She earned "a living by doing children’s portraits in pastel and oils at the famous department store Bonwit Teller. She found a ready audience with the society ladies who lunched at the store’s café and who often brought along their children. She also continued to paint landscapes, especially of Central Park, in watercolor" (The Enamel Arts Foundation).
Learning the Art of Enameling
On one of her visits to the Metropolitan Museum in 1945, Salzer was intrigued by a form of art she had never seen before – Limoges enamel, a technique that fused glass on copper. Many years later, she could still recall the first enameled piece she ever saw, a likeness of King Francis I: "It was a portrait but it looked like a jewel" ("Lisel Salzer: Her Art ..."). Drawn to the beauty, depth, and vibrant colors of enameled art, Salzer wanted to learn more about the process but was told the sixteenth-century technique had been lost. The few books written about the process were out of print. The Metropolitan Museum, however, owned two books about Limoges enamels and allowed Salzer to borrow them. She meticulously photographed them page by page. With her husband’s encouragement and spurred by her own determination, she bought a kiln, installed it in her home, and began to experiment.
Enameling entails applying colors layer by layer, moving from dark enamel, usually black, to light, using white enamel. After each of seven steps, the piece is fired in a 1,700-degree kiln. Although Salzer found black enamel readily available, she could not find the white enamel she needed to produce the bright hues she wanted. Undaunted, she pushed on. "She and her husband found recipes that led them to make their own white glass, which they then ground into a powder that could be used for painting. After a year of experimentation, Salzer was able to create a grisaille portrait that began to resemble the works she had seen at the museum" (The Enamel Arts Foundation). It was a skill that held her attention for the rest of her career.
Despite her new-found interest in enameling, Salzer kept up her portrait painting, as well. One day in 1947, while passing though Eagle Bridge, New York, she was invited to meet 86-year-old Grandma Moses (1860-1961). The great American folk artist, born Anna Mary Robertson, had grown up on a nearby farm. Salzer had been out painting that day and, with one canvas left, asked if she could paint the famous octogenarian. At first, Moses declined, concerned she could not afford the finished work. After assuring her she wanted no money, Salzer finally talked her into posing. Salzer asked if she wanted to be portrayed painting, but Moses preferred to just strike a pose. The painting shows her seated in a rocking chair, wearing a fine lace dress and a cameo at her throat. Her hair is caught up in a bun and she wears wire-rimmed glasses. Salzer’s portrait of Grandma Moses is in the collection of the Bennington Museum in Vermont.
Moving to Seattle
One summer, Salzer and her physician husband decided to escape the heat and humidity of New York and moved for a year to Fort Defiance, Arizona, which had a medical center for the Navajo community. There Salzer explored the artistic traditions of the Native tribes of the region and collected Navajo pottery and Hopi kachina dolls. After months in the Southwest, the couple decided not to return to New York. They traveled to California and then to Seattle, which Salzer described as having "four months of spring, such healthy fresh air, and the trees grow so green. I like it with the rain and all" ("Lisel Salzer: Her Art ...").
Arriving in Seattle in 1950, Salzer kept busy with lecturing on art, teaching classes, and participating in group and solo exhibits. In 1952, she was one of two Northwest winners in the 17th Ceramic National Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Syracuse, New York. Her three-inch enamel-on-copper portrait Robin earned her a $100 prize and a glowing review: "Most difficult to achieve such a small portrait in enamel. Wrought with consummate skill. Reminiscent of the old rare miniature enamel portraits in the Wallace collection in London and in the Cluny Museum in Paris" ("Lisel Salzer Wins Award"). It was one of dozens of awards she won over the years, including two other national awards.
That same year, she was featured in a Frederick & Nelson full-page ad that extolled the latest products, news, and events offered at the department store. The ad read in part: "Let Lisel Salzer, nationally known children’s artist, do one of her sensitive portraits for you! Each one catches the character of the sitter, gives life-long enjoyment! Oils from $200, pastels, $100, in your home by appointment. Watercolors here Wed., Fri. or Sat., 12:00 to 3:30, $15. Entrance to toy department, fourth floor" ("Portraits by Noted Artist").
In 1957, Salzer exhibited a collection of her portraits in a two-person show at the Otto Seligman Gallery, 4710 University Way, which earned this review: "Both in oils and watercolors, her landscapes and market scenes have a buoyant, pleasant freshness about them. The small enamels, too, are engaging and decorative" ("2 Seligman Gallery Shows"). Salzer also enjoyed creating pencil sketches and portraits of people at street fairs or arts festivals, preferring live drawing over drawing from photographs. "I love to do quick sketches of people in motion – especially children. I like to get the essence of someone, and you can’t see that when they pose" ("Emameling Technique Fires Her Imagination").
During the 1970s and 1980s, she had at least four exhibitions of her work at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum. In 1989, the Frye staged a major retrospective of her oil paintings, enamels, and drawings. The highlight of the show was her painting of a Navajo medicine man, completed in 1948 during her year in Arizona. Her work is part of the museum’s permanent collection.
Cottage with a View
For more than 50 years, Salzer lived and painted in her Mount Baker home. "It is an airy bungalow cluttered with the paraphernalia of her life – knickknacks, cello, sheet music, stacks of New Yorkers, canvases propped on easels, tubes of paint" ("Learning to Live with I-90"). For many of those years, her paintings of Lake Washington, made from her front windows or porch, showed glistening lake waters, tall trees, and a snow-capped Mount Rainier. And the Lake Washington Floating Bridge? She pretended it did not exist.
As the decades-long debate about replacing the bridge waned and ebbed, Salzer became more uneasy about her future in her Mount Baker home. At one point, she feared she might be forced to move. "I haven’t painted my home. Is it the plan to help detract from our homes so that we’ll be so psychologically conditioned, we’ll be glad to move? We feel helpless, powerless. This is the kind of psychological attitude that creates unrest, a sense of powerlessness, from an alienated government ... Why do we want to destroy what we have – close to the water, a beautiful view, the mountain, things very few cities have?" ("Mount Baker Ridge Residents in I-90’s Shadow"). Then, realizing the new floating bridge was going to move forward with or without her, she began to incorporate the structure into her paintings, documenting its progress. One of her oil paintings showed the half-completed bridge, another focused on its graceful lines and arched supports. "I’m resigned to it. I am just grateful that I can keep my home" ("Learning to Live with I-90").
Honored by Her Native Land
In her 80s, Salzer published a book and made a film to record what she had learned over the years about Limoges enamels. Former students Mark Leonard and Izumi Kuroiwa, co-owners of Kuroiwa-Leonard Media Arts, helped produce the 40-minute video in which Salzer talks about her career and shares the seven key steps in the enameling process.
In a touch of serendipity, the website built to promote the video changed the course of her life. An Austrian art historian saw the website, recognized Salzer’s name as one of the early Zinkenbach artists, and contacted her. At the age of 96, Salzer was re-discovered and acknowledged as a significant early twentieth-century Austrian artist. The Zinkenbach Museum honored her with a solo exhibit in 2002 and in 2003, she was awarded the Cross of Merit in Gold for her lifetime contributions to the arts in a ceremony in Seattle, a recognition made by the governor of the province of Salzburg.
Salzer died December 6, 2005, at her home. Even though she was partially blind in her later years, she continued to draw, taking pleasure in sketches she would send to friends and acquaintances. In the summer of 2023, an exhibit at the Zinkenbach Museum featured works from several of the painters from the artists’ colony, including Lisel Salzer.
