Susi Singer-Schinnerl

Susi Singer (October 26, 1894 – 1955), also known as Selma Singer-Schinnerl, was an Austrian-American Jewish ceramic artist known for her bright and detailed figurines.

Singer became known for her ceramics when studying at the Wiener Werkstätte in Austria. Forced to flee from Europe during the rise of World War II, Singer relocated to California, where she worked as a teacher and artist until her death in 1955. Today, Singer is known for her modernist and decorative figurines, and for her prominence in bringing Austrian influences into American ceramics.

Early life and education Susi Singer was born Selma Rosa Singer in Vienna, Austria on October 26, 1894. However, Singer exhibited natural artistic talent from a young age, and she received a scholarship to study at the acclaimed Wiener Werkstätte by the time she was seventeen.

Singer continued to pursue her artistic education while studying and producing ceramics at the Wiener Werkstätte. However, her early career was hindered by traditional Austrian gender roles, which stigmatized women entering the workforce. This sexism was perpetuated in the male-dominated art world, where female artists were often forced to develop skills through private instruction rather than within a formal academic setting. Most Viennese art institutions refused admission to women until 1920, and those that did permit female students often had a low quality of artistic instruction. Singer and contemporaries like Vally Wieselthier (1895–1977) and Tina Blau were thus limited in their educational opportunities and often followed similar educational arcs.

Singer attended at least two institutions that permitted admission to female students before 1920. She is referenced as studying at the Kunstgewerbeschule Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, which would later become the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Established in 1897, the school had no gendered admission restrictions and maintained a high level of art education. Although the artwork presented by the Wiener Werkstätte was criticized for folksy, baroque decorations that were too "feminine" for modernist ceramics, the exhibition was highly influential within American ceramic circles.

Singer drew inspiration from her surroundings, and her ceramics reflected the attitudes and culture of her location during their creation. Her early work for the Wiener Werkstätte adheres to the workshop's "identification of design as a vital means of domestic recovery, cultural reform, and even moral regeneration."

In 1924, Singer married coal miner Josef Schinnerl and moved to Grünbach, During this time, Singer's work extolled the virtues of rural life. She based her figurines on local townspeople and incorporated more humor into her pieces, creating refreshing ceramics with fantastic subject matter and bright color. just before World War II truly began within Austria.

Singer settled in Los Angeles in 1937, teaching classes and workshops while showing her work locally. In California, Singer's ceramic style shifted towards more realistic, simplified figurines.

Late career

Singer's friendship with Sheets, who was the director of the Scripps College's Arts Department from 1938 to 1954, allowed her to participate in a larger ceramics community. Located in Claremont, California, Scripps was a leader in ceramics during the 1940s and 1950s.

In 1952, Singer participated in the Ninth Annual Ceramic Exhibition at Scripps College.

Singer is often compared to Vally Wieselthier, a fellow Jewish Austrian ceramicist. The two artists attended the same educational institutions, and Weselthier's work for the Wiener Werkstätte was presented at the 1925 Paris exhibition in conjunction with Singer's work. Both women were forced to flee to the United States during World War II, and are often credited with bringing Austrian modernism to the American ceramics movement. However, although Singer's early work could be argued to coincide with Wieselthier's ceramics style, her later pieces are markedly different.

Posthumous exhibitions In 2005, an exhibition called "Women's 'Werk:' The Dignity of Craft" ran at the American Museum of Ceramic Art. The exhibition contrasted Singer's work with Marguerite Wildenhain, a Jewish ceramic artist who had also settled in California after escaping Nazi Germany.

Singer was also featured in The Better Half: Jewish Women Artists Before 1938, an exhibition that ran from November 4, 2016, to May 1, 2017, in the Jewish Museum Vienna. The exhibition aimed to present forty-four Jewish female artists whose careers were hindered by sexism or interrupted by the Holocaust, and cited Singer as one of the most well-known artists of this time and genre.