Art of Rosina Wachtmeister

Rosina was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1939. She learned flute as a child - must have inspired this beautiful flute picture. In 1953 she moved to Brazil - that must be where she learned to love color. Vienna in the 1940s would not have been a very colorful place!

In 1967 she moved to Italy and learned to paint in Rome, where she first exhibited her paintings in the Piazza Navona. From 1974 she moved to Capena, just north of Rome. And she's lived there ever since.

The streets of Capena, as well as her whole menagerie of animals (including 20 cats) have inspired many of her paintings. Seems like she chose a good place (and good cats) judging by her artworks!

Yes, Rosina Wachtmeister is probably most famous for her paintings of cats. They are adorable, exotic, warm, romantic, playful, colorful of course, and entirely enticing to all cat lovers. If I fell in love with her paintings of flute players and other musicians, I was became even more enamored of her work when I found her cats.

You may have noticed that her musicians have very round heads. Well, her cats have uniquely shaped heads - they start with a circular shape, like the people, and then the lines just continue up to make perfect pointed ears! And then, of course, they have the perfect profile noses. Fanciful, not constrained by realism, kind of like the attitude cats have about life!