Fredy Malec Koschitz

Friederike Malec Koschitz, also known as Fredy Malec Koschitz, (18 October 1914 – 2001) was a Slovenian painter and woodcarver. She worked as an artist in what is now Slovenia and later in Austria. In June 1915 her father died as a soldier in the World War I.

She and her mother therefore lived with her maternal grandmother, the shopkeeper Frančiška Julijani Peterka (1855–1943), in whose textile shop her mother was employed; her maternal grandfather, the senior Austro-Hungarian artillery officer Karl Kastl (1848–1920), who was also an amateur painter; her mother's sister, the sculptor and miniaturist Elza Kastl Obereigner; and Elza's daughter Elisabeth Charlotte Obereigner, later a sculptor known as Liza Obereigner Hribar.

After elementary school, she attended the municipal girls’ real gymnasium in Ljubljana (now Poljane Grammar School). She graduated there in June 1934.

Education While attending gymnasium, she also attended the Probuda evening art school (now the ). There she attended a painting course with the painter Henrika Šantel, where she discovered her talent for painting. Later at Probuda she attended a life-drawing course with the painters and , and a sculpture course with the sculptor . During the following four years she gave birth to three daughters.

In the early 1960s she also began painting and restoring chapels. In 1961 her husband died after a long illness.

Misidentification and rediscovery For a long time, the Maribor Art Gallery mistakenly believed that the name belonged to a man. While preparing the exhibition Ladies First! Women Artists in and from Styria, 1850–1950 (2020) at the Neue Galerie Graz, the exhibition curator, Austrian art historian Gudrun Danzer, searched for information about women artists in Styria and discovered an artist, whom an article in the Marburger Zeitung had called Fredi Koschitz. Because Gurdun Danzer was also collaborating with the Maribor Art Gallery, the Maribor-based art historian and senior curator Andreja Borin heard of the artist and decided to investigate who she was. After a long search, she found the name of sculptor Elza Kastl Obereigner in an archival document listing registered family members at a Ljubljana address. Through sculptors's descendants she established that Fredi was the artist Friederike Malec, who signed her works as Fredy.

Books with her illustrations

Staub unter Sternen (written by , Heyn, 1965, Klagenfurt)