Liselotte Moser
American, born Switzerland, 1906 - 1983Factories by the River, 1929
Not on view
Oil on canvas
Dimensions23 × 32 in. (58.4 × 81.3 cm)
Courtesy of the Isabel Foundation, Inlander Collection, L2003.94
This painting portrays storage tanks and industrial buildings along a river near Detroit, Michigan.
Liselotte Moser was born in Switzerland in l906. She studied in Vienna and in Berne before coming to Detroit in l927, where she completed her art training at the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts under John P. Wicker and Samuel Halpert. As one of the first twentieth century American painters to study in Paris, Halpert brought firsthand knowledge of Post-Impressionist painting to Detroit. Moser responded to Halpert's teaching and began painting landscape and figure compositions that reflected a modernist ideology. A bold simplification of form and a flattened Post-Impressionist space distinguishes Moser's landscape pictures from the late 1920s and the 1930s.
In addition to her painting, Moser also became known for her textile work. In 1964, Moser left Detroit and returned to her native Switzerland, where she died in 1983. She is remembered as a vibrant, cosmopolitan force in the Detroit art scene.
