Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel was a painter of animals and landscapes as well as a graphic artist. He collaborated with the Wiener Werkstätte and Gustav Klimt for the interior decoration of Stoclet Palace in Brussels. He was friends with the writer Arthur Roessler and the painter Egon Schiele.

The graphic artist and painter was born in Upper Franconia in Germany in 1881. Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel attended the School of Arts and Crafts in Munich and moved to Vienna after a brief study trip to Italy. He began studying at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, but soon discontinued his education. He later attended the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts of the Imperial-Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (now MAK – Museum of Applied Art, Vienna), where he was taught by Alfred Roller for one semester and prepared for his versatile use of various printing techniques in his later oeuvre. Jungnickel went on to study in Munich for a brief period before returning to Vienna and resuming his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts.
 
Wiener Werkstätte and Stoclet Palace
Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel, who had already been active as an independent artist during his studies, began working for the Wiener Werkstätte after the turn of the century. During that period he for instance created a decorative frieze with a height of more than one meter, showing animals and flowers – commissioned by Josef Hoffmann for a children’s bedroom in Stoclet Palace in Brussels – as well as his award-winning series of colored woodcuts Types of Animals at Schönbrunn. He also participated in the “Kunstschau Wien” in 1908, whose initiators included Gustav Klimt, and in the “Esposizione Internazionale di Roma” [“International Art Exhibition of Rome”] in 1911, where he won an artists’ award.

Roessler, Schiele and Klimt
Jungnickel left his adopted country for a teaching post at the Frankfurt School of Arts and Crafts in 1911. He abandoned his career as a teacher in the following year, however, and settled down in Vienna. Jungnickel’s close friends in Vienna included the writer Arthur Roessler and the painter Egon Schiele, at whose studio at Grünbergstraße 31 in Vienna’s 12th District Jungnickel would later live. In May 1914, Roessler, Jungnickel and some of their friends visited Thallern in Lower Austria, from where they sent a picture postcard to their fellow artist Gustav Klimt.

The Artist’s Exile and Return to His Adopted Country
Jungnickel, who went on many study trips in the Interwar Years and continued to enjoy major success as a graphic artist, emigrated to Istria after the “Anschluss” of Austria. He lived in exile on the Adriatic coast until he eventually returned to Austria in 1952. He died in Vienna in 1965.