Ivana Kobilca

Ivana Kobilca was born on 20 December 1861 in Ljubljana. She went to the Ursuline primary and high school. She made her first drawing while in school, but those drawings have not been preserved. At the age of 16, she was taken by her father to Vienna, where she decided to become a painter. At first she zealously imitated the works of old masters, and was later accepted into the Art and Crafts School in Munich. One year later she became the student of the famous professor Erdtelt. To conceal the fact that she was a female painter, she signed her paintings only with her initials – I.K. She exhibited in Ljubljana in 1889. The painting Kofetarica (Coffee Madam) aroused a lot of attention; it was one of her favourites. She lived in Florence for a while (1894). In Sarajevo (1897–1905) she took up wall painting. She did not return to Ljubljana until 1906, and only for a short time. She then moved to Berlin (1906–1914), where she earned her living by portraying wealthy citizens. The life of the painter who said about herself: “I wanted to see everything, peek behind every curtain, I was always driven forward,” came to an end on 5 December 1926 in Ljubljana