Bosphorus

Ema Bormann  printmaker and painter, was born to Eugen and Auguste Bormann in Döbling, Austria on July 29, 1887. She had early lessons in drawing and painting from Franz Rumpler and later studied with Ludwig Michalek in Vienna at the Institute for Teaching and Experimentation in Graphic Arts.Bormann volunteered as a nurse during World War I but she managed to complete her studies at the University of Vienna, receiving her doctorate in prehistoric archaeology and anthropology in June 1917. After the death of her father in 1917, she moved to Munich where she continued her studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule for one semester before applying her skills teaching etching, lithography, and woodcut at a private studio.According to Andreas Johns, Bormann was self-taught in relief printmaking, studying from books and developing her own techniques. She would have witnessed and studied the woodcuts of the German Expressionists and her distinct stippling effect could have been absorbed from the animated lines of expressionism.In 1920 she exhibited a number of her woodcuts in Vienna at the Künstlerhaus and that same year she began her wanderlust of travels to cities in Germany and the Netherlands. Between 1920 and 1923, she also took classes at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna studying engraving with Alfred Cossmann. In 1922, the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired work by Bormann.