Josef Diveky Paints The Krampus And Other Terrible Monsters For The Wiener Werkstätte

Ringel, Ringe, Reie,
Wir sind der Kinder dreie,
Sitzen unterm Hollerbusch,
Machen alle husch, husch, husch!

– Der Ringelreihen, illustrated by Josef Diveky with the Krampus and other horrors (the Hampelman, the Wasserman and the Werewolf) surrounding a child.

 

 

Every December 5, The Krampus arrives to punish naughty children. As Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) dishes out gifts to the good, on Krampusnacht (Krampus Night), immediately before the Feast of St. Nicholas on 6 December, the Krampus  comes to lay his vengeance upon on the bad.

The Krampus has, so they say, the body of man covered in thick black hair, horns on his head, one grotesque human foot and one goat’s foot. He has a tongue like a snake. He carries a bundle of birch branches to whip children.

 

Europeans love an evil monster, whether it be the Nuuttipukki or some other occult horror. Met with a mixture of fear and excitement, people have been exchanging greeting cards featuring the Krampus since the 19th century. In the early 20th Century, the brilliant Wiener Werkstätte celebrated the Krampus in its collections of postcards, many of them created by Josef Diveky (Josef von Divéky; 1887-1951).

 

 

Josef von Divéky studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Alois Delug (25 May 1859 – 17 September 1930) from 1905 to 1907 and at the Vienna School of Applied Arts from 1907 to 1910. He worked as a commercial artist in Vienna, Zurich, Brussels and Budapest.

From 1919, he lived in Switzerland and from 1941 taught at the Budapest School of Arts and Crafts.

He worked for the Wiener Werkstätte, the Lobmeyr glass chandelier company, created bookplates, published in various magazines and worked as a book illustrator.

In 1937, his etching Gefilde der Seeligen was confiscated from the Schlossmuseum Weimar and destroyed as part of the Nazi ‘Degenerate Art‘ campaign.

 

Shop: All these images and more can be bought as prints and cards in our shop.