Grete Wolf Krakauer

• Name — Grete Wolf Krakauer גרטה וולף קרקאואר • Birth Name — Grete Wolf • Born — 1890 • Birthplace — Moravia, Austria-Hungary • Died — 1970 • Place of death — Jerusalem, Israel • Education — University of Applied Arts Vienna • Field — Painting • Spouse — Leopold Krakauer Grete Wolf Krakauer née Wolf (1890–1970) was an Austrian-Israeli painter.

Wolf Krakauer was born in Witkowitz, Moravia, on December 10, 1890, to a relatively assimilated, middle class Jewish family. One year later, her family moved to Vienna, where she received a modern education and was introduced to the latest ideas in art and philosophy, such as socialism and psychoanalysis. She studied art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She went on to travel and study with Johannes Itten, Albert Weisgerber and Adolf Hölzel. Her first solo exhibition was at the Kunstsalon Heller in Vienna in 1913, just before World War I began. She joined an avant-garde group of artists, the Bund der Geistig, and met her future husband, Leopold Krakauer. She became known for her portraits, painting leading figures in Red Vienna, and her work was included in the 1922 Venice Biennale. In 1924, her husband moved to Jerusalem and she followed, along with their daughter Trude, a few months later. Instead of becoming active in the local art scene, she continued to develop her career in Europe exhibiting her work there and traveling there frequently until rising anti-Semitism made this impossible in 1932. Almost her entire family was murdered in the Holocaust and she only returned to Europe once after 1932. In pre-state Israel (the Yishuv), Zionist organizations such as the Jewish National Fund and Keren Hayesod commissioned paintings from Wolf Krakauer of pioneering settlements. She also created documentary sketches of the Peel Commission proceedings and established the Marionette Theatre, a puppet theater. She traveled widely and her work was exhibited in Australia, South Africa, and Thailand as well as in Jerusalem. In 1969, Wolf Krakauer was the recipient of the Jerusalem Prize for Painting and Sculpture. She died in 1970 in Jerusalem.