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Jelka Struppi Wolkensperg
1872.
1946.
Education:
Institute for the deaf and mute in Graz; Academy in Vienna (1889.-1893), Academy in Munich (1894-1896)
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| Biography: Dr Viktor de Struppi, Surgeon General, and Emma née Nemčić-Gostovinski (niece to the Illyrian poet Antun Nemčić Gostovinski) were the parents of the deaf and mute painter Jelka. Like Slava Raškaj, Jelka received her first Fine Art education in the Institute for the deaf and mute, though not in Vienna (like Slava), but in Graz, where her extraordinary talent was soon noticed, so Iso Kršnjavi provided for her scholarship for art studies. Her signed and dated drawings show that she first studied in Vienna, and, from 1894 to 1896, in Munich. In the Vienna club for the deaf and mute she met Baron Arthur Wolkensperg who was also deaf and mute, and whom she married in the Karlskirche church in Vienna on 19th October 1912. They went on honeymoon to Italy, but unfortunately her husband fell ill and died on 2 January 1913, after only three months of marriage. During the First World War, she barely sustained herself and her mother in Vienna. The clients for portraits were very few, so she placed advertisements offering to make photographs, where soldiers, and particularly invalids, were given a special discount. |
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