Ida
Leopoldina Emilia Künl was born on October 2, 1853, at Stari trg street in
Ljubljana to Maria Seydl and the academically trained painter Pavel Künl.
Having completed the four-year elementary education at the Ursuline school in
Ljubljana, she further attended the so-called repetition class. She was in a
drawing class, and according to school report her results in drawing were
excellent as a rule, for her name is included in the list of extra praised
girls. Also her father, Pavel, was giving young Ida drawing and painting
instruction, and she continued her art schooling with painter Henrika Langus, a
former neighbour in Stari trg street.
She soon
began teaching herself. Also young Ivana Kobilca was among her students whom
Ida trained to draw. With her earnings and supported by funds from the
Carniolan Provincial Assembly between 1873 and 1880, Ida travelled abroad for
several times. She first visited Vienna in 1873, during the following two years
she was staying in Munich, after which she annually paid visits to the imperial
capital. While in Vienna, she would go the Belvedere to copy Old Masters in the
gallery there, and she studied with Professor Jan Nowopacký, a painter of Czech
ancestry, who had studied landscape painting at the Vienna Academy concurrently
with Ida’s father. In 1878, Ida Künl studied portrait painting in the studio of
M. Aigner and was also trained by painter and printmaker Conrad Grefe. She established
contact with the Czech painter and printmaker Ludwig Michalek, but it has not
been ascertained whether she was his student too. Ida Künl concluded her study
travels with an exhibition in her hometown. Newspapers reported about her paintings
which she presented to the public in the shop windows of Ljubljana stores.
In April
1881, Ida Künl's mother died. The following year Ida married in Vienna, which
resulted in her leaving Ljubljana for good. She married the academically
trained sculptor Johann Unterkalmsteiner who was South Tyrolean by descent. He studied
sculpture at the Munich Academy but moved to Vienna in 1873. Ida and Johann had
five children: Hans (1882−1914), Oskar (1883−1884), Edmund (1884−1892), Maria
(1886−?) and Martha (1888−1959).
After her husband died in January 1897,
Ida maintained the family by means of a small shop with painting materials. She
also engaged in art, making paintings for mass sale and home use.Ida Unterkalmsteiner
was left alone with daughter Martha and son Hans, of whom Ida’s brother Oskar
was given custody. The uncle financially supported Hans until he was nineteen and
encouraged his artistic creativity, so that the young man soon asserted himself
as a printmaker, designer, draughtsman and painter. In 1914, he was appointed
Professor at the Arts and Crafts School in Bolzano, but the beginning of his
new career was thwarted by the outbreak of World War One. He died on the
Eastern Front in Galicia.
Nothing more is known about the further
life of Ida Unterkalmsteiner and her family. The painter died on March 15, 1926,
aged seventy-two. She was buried in the family grave in thecentral cemetery in Vienna.
According to Slovene newspapers of
the time, Ida painted a lot before her marriage and moving to Vienna; she
mainly executed portraits, altarpieces and other religious subject matter, she
copied works of Old Masters and was also interested in history painting.
Ida Künl, married Unterkalmsteiner or
Kalmsteiner – like her husband and her son, she used the shortened version of
the surname as her artistic name –, was in terms of technique a fairly capable
painter, but her works lack progress in the quest for artistic solutions and
new approaches. Despite this, newspapers wrote favourably about her, and
reported benevolently on her works, inviting art lovers to buy her pictures.