Erma Bossi
1875–1952 · Austria-Hungary, Kingdom of Italy · Expressionism
The story
Erma Bossi was a name she chose for herself. She was born in 1875 as Erminia Bosich, a naval officer's daughter in Pola, the Adriatic port that was then the main base of the Austro-Hungarian navy, and went to school in nearby Trieste. By around 1900 she was signing her pictures Erma Bossi. Later she added Barrera, in homage to the tenor Carlo Barrera, though the two never married.
In 1904 she moved to Munich to study painting, and in 1908 she stayed in the same boarding house in Murnau, a market town south of the city, as Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky. A year later she joined their Neue Künstlervereinigung München, the New Artists' Association, and showed in all three of its exhibitions. Münter painted her sitting at a table with Kandinsky.
By 1911 Bossi had moved on to Paris, and from the 1920s she lived in Milan on an Italian passport. Much of her work was destroyed in the wars, and the little-known painter received a solo exhibition only in 2013, at the Schlossmuseum in Murnau.
