The Jewish sculptor Teresa Feodorowna Ries
born 1866 in Budapest,
studied as a private student by a Professor Edmund Hellmer. He was a Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and later also the rector of the academy. At that time it was not possible for Teresa F. Ries to study at the academy as a woman and so she became a private student.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th century Teresa F. Ries was a very successful artist in Vienna and also in Europe.
She attended very famous exhibitions with her works (the first female sculptor at Künstlerhaus Vienna and Secession, world exhibitions in Paris and further international exhibitions). The artist wrote her own biography "The Language of the stone", published 1928. This was longtime before she could know what will happen in the world, to her and to her art.
Many of her works have been destroyed by the NS-regime in the 2nd world war and she had to flee from Vienna. Teresa F. Ries could not take her works with her and so she left them in Vienna. Unfortunately, many of her works have been lost, forgotten or destroyed as degenerate art. She never went back to Vienna and spent the rest of her life in Switzerland, where she died 1956 and without heritage.
