Luigi Kasimir

Austrian 1881-1961

Born in the days of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, in the town of Pettau, Luigi Kasimir was a student of the Vienna Academy of Art under William Unger. Highly regarded for his exquisitely detailed landmarks and landscapes, Kasimir’s popularity throughout Europe soon spread to North America where he produced a great number of his masterful prints.

Influenced by printmakers Unger, Kalckeuth and particularly Anders Zorn, Kasimir was among the first to develop and perfect the sophisticated technique of the coloured etching. To achieve colour, artists had previously made the print, then hand-coloured with watercolour—often with rather sloppy results. Kasimir’s method was to create a pastel sketch on paper, then transfer the design to as many as six etching plates, one for each colour. These plates were then printed one after another, by hand, to achieve the desired effect. The process would then be laboriously repeated for each print made.

Luigi Kasimir made an astonishing number of etchings during his long life, and these images are much in demand even today. His work can be found in the permanent collections of galleries worldwide, the National Gallery of Slovenia and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, to name just a few.