WALTER BOSS. WARDROBE BEAR BRASS.

Walter Bosse, wardrobe bear, brass, 1950s, black/gold, dimensions: 22 x 15 x 12 cm.

Walter Bosse was born in Vienna in 1904 as the child of academic painters. While her father worked as a portrait painter at the Russian court of the tsars, her mother, Luise Bosse, specialized in the production of collages. In 1914 the family moved to Abbazia, where they wanted to settle down for the long term, but had to give up this plan due to the outbreak of the First World War and fled to the summer house in Kufstein, where the father died the following year. Walter Bosse and his sister Gretl attended the local schools and engaged in sculpting wax figures. After the war, his mother sent him to the School of Applied Arts in Vienna (today: University of Applied Arts) where he studied ceramics under the direction of Michael Powolny and ornamentation under Franz Cizek. After completing his training in Vienna and then spending a year studying at the Munich School of Applied Arts, Walter Bosse opened his first ceramics studio in Kufstein in 1921. A number of well-known companies bought designs from him at that time or had them made directly in Kufstein. At the Paris arts and crafts exhibition in 1925, which had the status of a world exhibition, Walter Bosse exhibited together with the most important Austrian artists and large manufacturers such as Augarten Porzellan, Lobmeyr Glas and the Goldscheider company and was described in the catalog as having “strong ceramic talent”. Supported by his mentor Walter Hoffmann, the Bosse designs were soon in great demand. From 1924 he designed for the Augarten manufactory, from 1927 for the Goldscheider company.

After the artist had to close his first ceramics manufactory in Kufstein as a result of the general economic turbulence, he settled in Vienna from 1938, where he first founded the Bosse-Keramik company and then, in 1947, the Terra company. However, Bosse was never able to fully recover financially and finally died impoverished in Iserlohn (Germany) in 1979 after a second bankruptcy and several lawsuits.

The oeuvre of Walter Bosse, created with inexhaustible creativity and originality, is represented in numerous domestic and foreign private collections and museums and Austrian ceramic art would be unimaginable without it.