, Austria, 1920s, walnut veneer, height 130.5 cm, length 100 cm, depth 33.5 cm. (DRAX)

Provenance:
Sigmund and Mary Primavesi; passed down by descent after Mary Primavesi’s death in 1949; uninterrupted family ownership until 2018

Lit.:
a comprehensive compilation of family documents such as birth and death certificates, ownership and estate inventories, invoices and photographs of Sigmund and Mary (Maria) Primavesi and other family members, Gustav Klimt. Erwartung und Erfüllung. Entwürfe zum Mosaikfries im Palais Stoclet/ Expectations and Fulfillment. Cartoons for the Mosaic Frieze at Stoclet House, MAK, Vienna 2012, especially pp. 93-95 (to Mary Primavesi and the Stoclet cartoons)

Sigmund Primavesi was born in 1852 into the widely ramified Primavesi family of industrialists and bankers, who had their main seat in Olomouc in Moravia. He was a relative of Otto Primavesi, the prominent patron and financier of the Wiener Werkstätte, which had been founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser in 1903. In 1915, after Fritz Waerndorfer, its first financier, had left, Otto and his wife Mäda took over to steer the fate of the company, which was facing bankruptcy. The couple remained deeply committed to the undertaking’s cause until 1926. Otto and other members of the Primavesi family were friends with the leading artists of their time and particularly generous supporters of Josef Hoffmann and Gustav Klimt.

In 1922 Sigmund Primavesi married Maria (Mary), who inherited his possessions after his death in 1938. The estate inventory drawn up after Mary’s death on 23 September 1949 also lists a share of 51 2/3 per cent in Gustav Klimt’s designs for the famous mosaic frieze at Stoclet Palace in Brussels, on loan to the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry since the late 1920ies. Today they belong to the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art. Mary Primavesi died childless in 1949, and her bequest was divided up among five members of her family who sold the nine large cartoons in 1961 to the MAK whereas part of the interior decoration remained in family possession until recent days.