"Entwurzelt in diesem steinernen Meer von Wolkenkratzern". Die österreichische Künstlerin Erika Giovanna Klien und ihre Briefe aus Amerika in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren als auto/biographische Quelle

The article focuses on the life and work of the Austrian painter and art educator Erika Giovanna Klien (1900–1957), with a particular interest in the period after her move from Vienna to New York in 1929. Klien was the most famous representative of Vienna kinetism (Wiener Schule des Kinetismus), an art form featuring movement in space and one of the rare Austrian avant-garde movements in the 1920s. From 1929 to 1941 (when World War II interrupted her correspondence) Erika Giovanna Klien wrote numerous letters to her family in Vienna, rare sources for her everyday life, thoughts, and dreams, which can tell us about her impressions of the metropolis New York as well as her struggle to establish herself as an female artist. Klien’s correspondence also allows for a methodological take on the value of autobiographical sources in general in order to (re-)construct artists’ biographies.