Franz Cižek

Franz Cižek (František Čížek; 1865–1946) was a Czech-Austrian genre and portrait painter who is best remembered as a reformer of art education. Born in Litoměřice in northern Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire, he moved to Vienna at nineteen and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts under Franz Rumpler, Josef Mathias von Trenkwald and Siegmund L'Allemand.

While still a student, he allowed children from the family he lodged with to visit his room, use his art supplies and express themselves freely. Impressed by their creativity, he showed their work to fellow artists, who encouraged him to start a school for children. In 1897 he opened the Juvenile Art Classes in Vienna, free of charge for local children, with a loose structure that prized imagination. In 1904 he became director of the Department of Experimentation and Research at the Vienna School of Applied Arts. His ideas spread through former assistants such as Erika Giovanna Klien, who took his methods to the United States, and through the Swiss painter Johannes Itten, later a Bauhaus leader.