| Jelka
Struppi Wolkensperg 1872 - 1946
Education:
Institute for the deaf and mute in Graz; Academy in Vienna
(1889.-1893), Academy in Munich (1894-1896)
Biography: Dr Viktor de Struppi, Surgeon General, and Emma
née Nemcic-Gostovinski (niece to the Illyrian poet Antun
Nemcic Gostovinski) were the parents of the deaf and mute
painter Jelka. Like Slava Raškaj, Jelka received her first
Fine Art education in the Institute for the deaf and mute,
though not in Vienna (like Slava), but in Graz, where her
extraordinary talent was soon noticed, so Iso Kršnjavi provided
for her scholarship for art studies. Her signed and dated
drawings show that she first studied in Vienna, and, from
1894 to 1896, in Munich. In the Vienna club for the deaf
and mute she met Baron Arthur Wolkensperg who was also deaf
and mute, and whom she married in the Karlskirche church
in Vienna on 19th October 1912. They went on honeymoon to
Italy, but unfortunately her husband fell ill and died on
2 January 1913, after only three months of marriage. During
the First World War, she barely sustained herself and her
mother in Vienna. The clients for portraits were very few,
so she placed advertisements offering to make photographs,
where soldiers, and particularly invalids, were given a
special discount.
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