Gertie Fröhlich

Multidisciplinary artist and graphic designer Gertie Fröhlich lived and worked at the center of Vienna’s midcentury avant-garde. Her apartment was a creative hub for postwar artists, and Fröhlich played a key role in the establishment of Galerie nächst St. Stephan, a platform for cutting-edge art in Vienna.

Fröhlich experimented with painting, typography, posters, and illustrations, alongside creating elaborate gingerbread designs. Fröhlich produced over one hundred iconic film posters for the Austrian Film Museum between 1964 and the mid-1980s, defining the institution’s visual identity with a poetic and mystical sensibility. She also created the museum’s trademark logo of the mythical whale-like creature, Zyphius, inspired by a book of Renaissance illustrations. While Fröhlich was never formally associated with the Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus (“Vienna School of Fantastic Realism”), her poster designs frequently align with the movement’s commitment to realism, esoteric symbolism, and psychologically charged compositions.

Fröhlich’s creations emphasized the artistry in a typically overlooked domestic craft.

For Luna Luna, Fröhlich created a gingerbread booth for which an assortment of gingerbread figures of suns, moons, angels, and unicorns were displayed in a window framed by a painted scenography composed of Greek mythological iconography. Fröhlich first designed gingerbread figures as holiday gifts for friends and soon after began to produce hand-decorated confections as commercial art objects.